Magnetic Properties and Spin-orbit Coupling induced Semiconductivity in LK-99

Abstract

Recent reports of a possible room-temperature superconductor called LK-99 have generated a lot of attention worldwide. In just a few days, a large amount of experimental works attempted to reproduce this sample and verify its properties. At the same time a large amount of theoretical works have also been reported. However, many experiments have drawn different conclusions, and many theoretical results are not consistent with experimental results. For one of the structures of LK-99 with the chemical formula as Pb9Cu(PO4)6O, many first-principles calculations did not consider spin-orbit coupling and concluded that it is a flat band metal. However, spin-orbit coupling is often not negligible in systems with heavy elements, and LK-99 contains a large amount of heavy element Pb. We performed calculations of electronic structure of Pb9Cu(PO4)6O with spin-orbit coupling, and the results show that it's not a metal but a semiconductor. This is consistent with many experimental results. In the ferromagnetic state Pb9Cu(PO4)6O is an indirect-bandgap semiconductor with a bandgap of 292 meV. Moreover, its conduction band is a flat band. At an electron doping level of 0.5 e/unit cell, Pb9Cu(PO4)6O becomes metallic and has a flat band with a width of only 25 meV at the Fermi level in the ferromagnetic state. While in the antiferromagnetic-A state, Pb9Cu(PO4)6O is a direct-bandgap semiconductor with a bandgap of 300 meV. As a magnetic narrowband semiconductor, Pb9Cu(PO4)6O may have potential application value in the field of optoelectronic device, photocatalytic, photodetector and spintronics device.