No Arabic abstract
The wave-function-matching (WFM) technique for first-principles transport-property calculations was modified by So{}rensen {it et al.} so as to exclude rapidly decreasing evanescent waves [So{}rensen {it et al.}, Phys. Rev. B {bf 77}, 155301 (2008)]. However, this method lacks translational invariance of the transmission probability with respect to insertion of matching planes and consistency between the sum of the transmission and reflection probabilities and the number of channels in the transition region. We reformulate the WFM method since the original methods are formulated to include all the generalized Bloch waves. It is found that the translational invariance is destroyed by the overlap of the layers between the electrode and transition regions and by the pseudoinverses used to exclude the rapidly decreasing evanescent waves. We then devise a method that removes the overlap and calculates the transmission probability without the pseudoinverses. As a result, we find that the translational invariance of the transmission probability with respect to insertion of the extra layers is properly retained and the sum of the transmission and reflection probabilities exactly agrees with the number of channels. In addition, we prove that the accuracy in the transmission probability of this WFM technique is comparable with that obtained by the nonequilibrium Greens function method. Furthermore, we carry out the electron transport calculations on two-dimensional graphene sheets embedded with B--N line defects sandwiched between a pair of semi-infinite graphene electrodes and find the dependence of the electron transmission on the transverse momentum perpendicular to the direction of transport.
We propose a first-principles method of efficiently evaluating electron-transport properties of very long systems. Implementing the recursive Greens function method and the shifted conjugate gradient method in the transport simulator based on real-space finite-difference formalism, we can suppress the increase in the computational cost, which is generally proportional to the cube of the system length to a linear order. This enables us to perform the transport calculations of double-walled carbon nanotubes~(DWCNTs) with 196,608 atoms. We find that the conductance spectra exhibit different properties depending on the periodicity of doped impurities in DWCNTs and they differ from the properties for systems with less than 1,000 atoms.
We develop a first-principles electron-transport simulator based on the Lippmann--Schwinger (LS) equation within the framework of the real-space finite-difference scheme. In our fully real-space based LS (grid LS) method, the ratio expression technique for the scattering wave functions and the Greens function elements of the reference system is employed to avoid numerical collapse. Furthermore, we present analytical expressions and/or prominent calculation procedures for the retarded Greens function, which are utilized in the grid LS approach. In order to demonstrate the performance of the grid LS method, we simulate the electron-transport properties of the semiconductor/oxide interfaces sandwiched between semi-infinite metal electrodes. The results confirm that the leakage current through the (001)Si/SiO$_2$ model becomes much larger when the dangling-bond (DB) state is induced by a defect in the oxygen layer while that through the (001)Ge/GeO$_2$ model is insensitive to the DB state.
A first-principles approach based on Density Functional Theory and Non-Equilibrium Greens functions is used to study the molecular transport system consisting of benzenedithiolate connected with monoatomic gold and platinum electrodes. Using symmetry arguments we explain why the conductance mechanism is different for gold and platinum electrodes. We present the charge stability diagram for the benzenedithiolate connected with monoatomic platinum electrodes including many-body effects in terms of an extended Hubbard Hamiltonian and discuss how the electrodes and the many-body effects influence the transport properties of the system.
We present details of our effective computational methods based on the real-space finite-difference formalism to elucidate electronic and magnetic properties of the two-dimensional (2D) materials within the framework of the density functional theory. The real-space finite-difference formalism enables us to treat truly 2D computational models by imposing individual boundary condition on each direction. The formulae for practical computations under the boundary conditions specific to the 2D materials are derived and the electronic band structures of 2D materials are demonstrated using the proposed method. Additionally, we introduce other first-principles works on the MoS2 monolayer focusing on the modulation of electronic and magnetic properties originating from lattice defects.
Wave-CAIPI MR imaging is a 3D imaging technique which can uniformize the g-factor maps and significantly reduce g-factor penalty at high acceleration factors. But it is time-consuming to calculate the average g-factor penalty for optimizing the parameters of Wave-CAIPI. In this paper, we propose a novel fast calculation method to calculate the average g-factor in Wave-CAIPI imaging. Wherein, the g-factor value in the arbitrary (e.g. the central) position is separately calculated and then approximated to the average g-factor using Taylor linear approximation. The verification experiments have demonstrated that the average g-factors of Wave-CAIPI imaging which are calculated by the proposed method is consistent with the previous time-consuming theoretical calculation method and the conventional pseudo multiple replica method. Comparison experiments show that the proposed method is averagely about 1000 times faster than the previous theoretical calculation method and about 1700 times faster than the conventional pseudo multiple replica method.