No Arabic abstract
Defects in semiconductors can exhibit multiple charge states, which can be used for charge storage applications. Here we consider such charge storage in a series of oxygen deficient phases of TiO$_2$, known as Magneli phases. These Ti$_n$O$_{2n-1}$ Magneli phases present well-defined crystalline structures, i. e., their deviation from stoichiometry is accommodated by changes in space group as opposed to point defects. We show that these phases exhibit intermediate bands with the same electronic quadruple donor transitions akin to interstitial Ti defect levels in TiO$_2$-rutile. Thus, the Magneli phases behave as if they contained a very large pseudo-defect density: $frac{1}{2}$ per formula unit Ti$_n$O$_{2n-1}$. Depending on the Fermi Energy the whole material will become charged. These crystals are natural charge storage materials with a storage capacity that rivals the best known supercapacitors.
We investigated theoretically electronic and magnetic properties of the perovskite material SrCoO$_{3-delta}$ with $deltaleq 0.15$ using a projector-augmented plane-wave method and a Greens function method. This material is known from various experiments to be ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature of 260$,$K to 305$,$K and a magnetic moment of 1.5${,mu_text{B}}$ to 3.0${,mu_text{B}}$. Applying the magnetic force theorem as it is formulated within Greens function method, we calculated for SrCoO$_{3-delta}$ the magnetic exchange parameters and estimated the Curie temperature. Including correlation effects by an effective $U$ parameter within the GGA$+U$ approach and verifying this by hybrid functional calculations, we obtained the Curie temperatures in dependence of the oxygen deficiency close to the experimental values.
Tungsten trioxide is a versatile material with widespread applications ranging from electrochromic and optoelectronic devices to water splitting and catalysis of chemical reactions. For technological applications, thin films of WO3 are particularly appealing, taking advantage from high surface-to-volume ratio and tunable physical properties. However, the growth of stoichiometric, crystalline thin films is challenging because the deposition conditions are very sensitive to the formation of oxygen vacancies. In this work, we show how background oxygen pressure during pulsed laser deposition can be used to tune the structural and electronic properties of WO3 thin films. By performing X-ray diffraction and low-temperature transport measurements, we find changes in WO3 lattice volume up to 10%, concomitantly with an insulator-to-metal transition as a function of increased level of electron doping. We use advanced ab initio calculations to describe in detail the properties of the oxygen vacancy defect states, and their evolution in terms of excess charge concentration. Our results depict an intriguing scenario where structural, electronic, optical, and transport properties of WO3 single-crystal thin films can all be purposely tuned by a suited control of oxygen vacancies formation during growth.
The idea of magnetic monopoles in spin ice has enjoyed much success at intermediate temperatures, but at low temperatures a description in terms of monopole dynamics alone is insufficient. Recently, numerical simulations were used to argue that magnetic impurities account for this discrepancy by introducing a magnetic equivalent of residual resistance in the system. Here we propose that oxygen deficiency is the leading cause of magnetic impurities in as-grown samples, and we determine the defect structure and magnetism in Y2Ti2O(7-delta) using diffuse neutron scattering and magnetization measurements. These defects are eliminated by oxygen annealing. The introduction of oxygen vacancies causes Ti4+ to transform to magnetic Ti3+ with quenched orbital magnetism, but the concentration is anomalously low. In the spin-ice material Dy2Ti2O7 we find that the same oxygen-vacancy defects suppress moments on neighbouring rare-earth sites, and that these magnetic distortions dramatically slow down the long-time monopole dynamics at sub-Kelvin temperatures.
In this work, we have systematically studied the role of point defects in the recombination time of monolayer MoS$_2$ using time-dependent ab initio non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulations. Various types of point defects, such as S vacancy, S interstitial, Mo vacancy and Mo interstitial have been considered. We show that defects strongly accelerate the electron-hole recombination, especially interstitial S atoms do that by 3 orders of magnitude higher compared to pristine MoS$_2$. Mo defects (both vacancy and interstitial) introduce a multitude of de-excitation pathways via various defect levels in the energy gap. The results of this study provide some fundamental understanding of photoinduced de-excitation dynamics in presence of defects in highly technologically relevant 2D MoS$_2$.
Implementation of an optically active material on silicon has been a persistent technological challenge. For tandem photovoltaics using a Si bottom cell, as well as for other optoelectronic applications, there has been a longstanding need for optically active, wide band gap materials that can be integrated with Si. ZnSiP$_2$ is a stable, wide band gap (2.1 eV) material that is lattice matched with silicon and comprised of inexpensive elements. As we show in this paper, it is also a defect-tolerant material. Here, we report the first ZnSiP$_2$ photovoltaic device. We show that ZnSiP$_2$ has excellent photoresponse and high open circuit voltage of 1.3 V, as measured in a photoelectrochemical configuration. The high voltage and low band gap-voltage offset are on par with much more mature wide band gap III-V materials. Photoluminescence data combined with theoretical defect calculations illuminate the defect physics underlying this high voltage, showing that the intrinsic defects in ZnSiP$_2$ are shallow and the minority carrier lifetime is 7 ns. These favorable results encourage the development of ZnSiP$_2$ and related materials as photovoltaic absorber materials.