No Arabic abstract
Ab-initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations of the relative stability of anatase and rutile polymorphs of TiO2 were carried using all-electron atomic orbitals methods with local density approximation (LDA). The rutile phase exhibited a moderate margin of stability of ~ 3 meV relative to the anatase phase in pristine material. From computational analysis of the formation energies of Si, Al, Fe and F dopants of various charge states across different Fermi level energies in anatase and in rutile, it was found that the cationic dopants are most stable in Ti substitutional lattice positions while formation energy is minimised for F- doping in interstitial positions. All dopants were found to considerably stabilise anatase relative to the rutile phase, suggesting the anatase to rutile phase transformation is inhibited in such systems with the dopants ranked F>Si>Fe>Al in order of anatase stabilisation strength. Al and Fe dopants were found to act as shallow acceptors with charge compensation achieved through the formation of mobile carriers rather than the formation of anion vacancies.
We determine the stability and properties of interfaces of low-index Au surfaces adhered to TiO2(110), using density functional theory energy density calculations. We consider Au(100) and Au(111) epitaxies on rutile TiO2(110) surface, as observed in experiments. For each epitaxy, we consider several different interfaces: Au(111)//TiO2(110) and Au(100)//TiO2(110), with and without bridging oxygen, Au(111) on 1x2 added-row TiO2(110) reconstruction, and Au(111) on a proposed 1x2 TiO reconstruction. The density functional theory energy density method computes the energy changes on each of the atoms while forming the interface, and evaluates the work of adhesion to determine the equilibrium interfacial structure.
In this paper we study the possible relation between the electronic and magnetic structure of the TiO2/LaAlO3 interface and the unexpected magnetism found in undoped TiO2 films grown on LaAlO$_3$. We concentrate on the role played by structural relaxation and interfacial oxygen vacancies. LaAlO3 has a layered structure along the (001) direction with alternating LaO and AlO2 planes, with nominal charges of +1 and -1, respectively. As a consequence of that, an oxygen deficient TiO2 film with anatase structure will grow preferently on the AlO2 surface layer. We have therefore performed ab-initio calculations for superlattices with TiO2/AlO2 interfaces with interfacial oxygen vacancies. Our main results are that vacancies lead to a change in the valence state of neighbour Ti atoms but not necessarily to a magnetic solution and that the appearance of magnetism depends also on structural details, such as second neighbor positions. These results are obtained using both the LSDA and LSDA+U approximations.
Using the first-principles density-functional approach, magnetic properties of Mn-, Fe-, Co-, and Ni-doped rutile TiO2 were investigated for two different impurity concentrations (25% and 6.25%). Calculations were performed with the Full-Potential Linearized-Augmented Plane Waves (FLAPW) method, assuming that the magnetic impurities substitutionally replace the Ti ions. Our results show that the systems (with the exception of Ni-doped TiO2) are ferromagnetic. We also found that polarization mainly occurs at the impurity sites, and the magnetic moments of the impurities are independent of the impurity concentration.
The electronic and structural properties of (i) boron doped graphene sheets, and (ii) the chemisorption processes of hydrogen adatoms on the boron doped graphene sheets have been examined by {it ab initio} total energy calculations.
By performing accurate ab-initio density functional theory calculations, we study the role of $4f$ electrons in stabilizing the magnetic-field-induced ferroelectric state of DyFeO$_{3}$. We confirm that the ferroelectric polarization is driven by an exchange-strictive mechanism, working between adjacent spin-polarized Fe and Dy layers, as suggested by Y. Tokunaga [Phys. Rev. Lett, textbf{101}, 097205 (2008)]. A careful electronic structure analysis suggests that coupling between Dy and Fe spin sublattices is mediated by Dy-$d$ and O-$2p$ hybridization. Our results are robust with respect to the different computational schemes used for $d$ and $f$ localized states, such as the DFT+$U$ method, the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof (HSE) hybrid functional and the GW approach. Our findings indicate that the interaction between the $f$ and $d$ sublattice might be used to tailor ferroelectric and magnetic properties of multiferroic compounds.