arXiv subjects

Emilio Artacho

Publications and source records attributed to Emilio Artacho.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2005

First-principles study of structural, elastic, and bonding properties of pyrochlores

Density Functional Theory calculations have been performed to obtain lattice parameters, elastic constants, and electronic properties of ideal pyrochlores with the composition A$_2$B$_2$O$_7$ (where A=La,Y and B=Ti,Sn,Hf, Zr). Some thermal properties are also inferred from the elastic properties. A decrease of the sound velocity (and thus, of the Debye temperature) with the atomic mass of the B ion is observed. Static and dynamical atomic charges are obtained to quantify the degree of covalency/ionicity. A large anomalous contribution to the dynamical charge is observed for Hf, Zr, and specially for Ti. It is attributed to the hybridization between occupied $2p$ states of oxygen and unoccupied d states of the B cation. The analysis based on Mulliken population and deformation charge integrated in the Voronoi polyhedra indicates that the ionicity of these pyrochlores increases in the order Sn--Ti--Hf--Zr. The charge deformation contour plots support this assignment.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2004

Energetics of intrinsic point defects in ZrSiO$_4$

Using first principles calculations we have studied the formation energies, electron and hole affinities, and electronic levels of intrinsic point defects in zircon. The atomic structures of charged interstitials, vacancies, Frenkel pairs and anti-site defects are obtained. The limit of high concentration of point defects, relevant for the use of this material in nuclear waste immobilization, was studied with a variable lattice relaxation that can simulate the swelling induced by radiation damage. The limit of low concentration of defects is simulated with larger cells and fixed lattice parameters. Using known band offset values at the interface of zircon with silicon, we analyze the foreseeable effect of the defects on the electronic properties of zircon used as gate in metal-oxide-semiconductor devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2004

Intrinsic point defects and volume swelling in ZrSiO4 under irradiation

The effects of high concentration of point defects in crystalline ZrSiO4 as originated by exposure to radiation, have been simulated using first principles density functional calculations. Structural relaxation and vibrational studies were performed for a catalogue of intrinsic point defects, with different charge states and concentrations. The experimental evidence of a large anisotropic volume swelling in natural and artificially irradiated samples is used to select the subset of defects that give similar lattice swelling for the concentrations studied, namely interstitials of O and Si, and the anti-site Zr(Si), Calculated vibrational spectra for the interstitials show additional evidence for the presence of high concentrations of some of these defects in irradiated zircon.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2004

A density-functional study of charge doping in WO3

The addition of electron donors to the vacant A site of defect-perovskite structure tungsten trioxide causes a series of structural and chemical phase transitions; for instance, in the well-known case of the sodium tungsten bronzes (NaxWO3). Here we calculate the effect of the addition of electronic charge to WO3 without the complication of also including sodium ions. Our density functional theory method enables isolation of electronic effects from the additional size, chemical, and disorder effects present in experimental samples. Our calculated low-temperature phase diagram between x=0 and x=1 moves from the initial low-temperature monoclinic phase through a second (centered) monoclinic phase, an orthorhombic phase, a tetragonal antiferroelectric, and an aristotypic cubic phase, in broad agreement with the experimentally-observed transformations in NaxWO3. Our work confirms that the observed structural transformations are driven primarily by electronic factors. We find that the dominant electronic effect is the covalent interaction between the tungsten 5d and oxygen 2p orbitals.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2004

Structural relaxations in electronically excited poly(para-phenylene)

Structural relaxations in electronically excited poly(para-phenylene) are studied using many-body perturbation theory and density-functional-theory methods. A sophisticated description of the electron-hole interaction is required to describe the energies of the excitonic states, but we show that the structural relaxations associated with exciton formation can be obtained quite accurately within a constrained density-functional-theory approach. We find that the structural relaxations in the low-energy excitonic states extend over about 8 monomers, leading to an energy reduction of 0.22 eV and a Stokes shift of 0.40 eV.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2002

Model Hessian for accelerating first-principles structure optimizations

We present two methods to accelerate first-principles structural relaxations, both based on the dynamical matrix obtained from a universal model of springs for bond stretching and bending. Despite its simplicity, the normal modes of this model Hessian represent excellent internal coordinates for molecules and solids irrespective of coordination, capturing not only the long-wavelength acoustic modes of large systems, but also the short-wavelength low-frequency modes that appear in complex systems. In the first method, the model Hessian is used to precondition a conjugate gradients minimization, thereby drastically reducing the effective spectral width and thus obtaining a substantial improvement of convergence. The same Hessian is used in the second method as a starting point of a quasi-Newton algorithm (Broyden's method and modifications thereof), reducing the number of steps needed to find the correct Hessian. Results for both methods are presented for geometry optimizations of clusters, slabs, and biomolecules, with speed-up factors between 2 and 8.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2001

Electron correlation in the Si(100) surface

Motivated by the controversy between quantum chemists and solid-state physicists, and by recent experimental results, spin-polarized density-functional (DFT) calculations are used to probe electron correlation in the Si(100) reconstructed surface. The ground state displays antiferromagnetic spin polarization for low dimer inclinations indicating, not magnetic order, but the importance of Mott-like correlations among dangling bonds. The lowest energy corresponds to a higher dimer inclination with no spin. DFT energies, however, should be taken with caution here. Our results together with quantum-chemical findings suggest dimers with highly correlated electrons that tend to buckle due to interactions with other dimers.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2001

Efficient index handling of multidimensional periodic boundary conditions

An efficient method is described to handle mesh indexes in multidimensional problems like numerical integration of partial differential equations, lattice model simulations, and determination of atomic neighbor lists. By creating an extended mesh, beyond the periodic unit cell, the stride in memory between equivalent pairs of mesh points is independent of their position within the cell. This allows to contract the mesh indexes of all dimensions into a single index, avoiding modulo and other implicit index operations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2001

Numerical atomic orbitals for linear scaling

The performance of basis sets made of numerical atomic orbitals is explored in density-functional calculations of solids and molecules. With the aim of optimizing basis quality while maintaining strict localization of the orbitals, as needed for linear-scaling calculations, several schemes have been tried. The best performance is obtained for the basis sets generated according to a new scheme presented here, a flexibilization of previous proposals. The basis sets are tested versus converged plane-wave calculations on a significant variety of systems, including covalent, ionic and metallic. Satisfactory convergence (deviations significantly smaller than the accuracy of the underlying theory) is obtained for reasonably small basis sizes, with a clear improvement over previous schemes. The transferability of the obtained basis sets is tested in several cases and it is found to be satisfactory as well.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2001

Polarons in Carbon Nanotubes

We use ab initio total-energy calculations to predict the existence of polarons in semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs). We find that the CNTs' band edge energies vary linearly and the elastic energy increases quadratically with both radial and with axial distortions, leading to the spontaneous formation of polarons. Using a continuum model parametrized by the ab initio calculations, we estimate electron and hole polaron lengths, energies and effective masses and analyze their complex dependence on CNT geometry. Implications of polaron effects on recently observed electro- and opto-mechanical behavior of CNTs are discussed.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2000

First principles study of the adsorption of C60 on Si(111)

The adsorption of C60 on Si(111) has been studied by means of first-principles density functional calculations. A 2x2 adatom surface reconstruction was used to simulate the terraces of the 7x7 reconstruction. The structure of several possible adsorption configurations was optimized using the ab initio atomic forces, finding good candidates for two different adsorption states observed experimentally. While the C60 molecule remains closely spherical, the silicon substrate appears quite soft, especially the adatoms, which move substantially to form extra C-Si bonds, at the expense of breaking Si-Si bonds. The structural relaxation has a much larger effect on the adsorption energies, which strongly depend on the adsorption configuration, than on the charge transfer.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2000

Zigzag equilibrium structure in monatomic wires

We have applied first-principles density-functional calculations to the study of the energetics, and the elastic and electronic properties of monatomic wires of Au, Cu, K, and Ca in linear and a planar-zigzag geometries. For Cu and Au wires, the zigzag distortion is favorable even when the linear wire is stretched, but this is not observed for K and Ca wires. In all the cases, the equilibrium structure is an equilateral zigzag (bond angle of 60$^{\rm o}$). Only in the case of Au, the zigzag geometry can also be stabilized for an intermediate bond angle of 131$^{\rm o}$. The relationship between the bond and wire lengths is qualitatively different for the metallic (Au, Cu and, K) and semiconducting (Ca) wires.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2000

New Superhard Phases for 3D C60-based Fullerites

We have explored new possible phases of 3D C60-based fullerites using semiempirical potentials and ab-initio density functional methods. We have found three closely related structures - two body centered orthorhombic and one body centered cubic - having 52, 56 and 60 tetracoordinated atoms per molecule. These 3D polymers result in semiconductors with bulk moduli near 300 GPa, and shear moduli around 240 GPa, which make them good candidates for new low density superhard materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv1999

Density functional calculations of planar DNA base-pairs

We present a systematic Density Functional Theory (DFT) study of geometries and energies of the nucleic acid DNA bases (guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine) and 30 different DNA base-pairs. We use a recently developed linear-scaling DFT scheme, which is specially suited for systems with large numbers of atoms. As a first step towards the study of large DNA systems, in this work: (i) We establish the reliability of the approximations of our method (including pseudopotentials and basis sets) for the description of the hydrogen-bonded base pairs, by comparing our results with those of former calculations. We show that the interaction energies at Hartree-Fock geometries are in very good agreement with those of second order Møller-Plesset (MP2) perturbation theory (the most accurate technique that can be applied at present for system of the sizes of the base-pairs). (ii) We perform DFT structural optimizations for the 30 different DNA base-pairs, only three of which had been previously studied with DFT. Our results provide information on the effect of correlation on the structure of the other 27 base pairs, for which only Hartree-Fock geometries were formerly available.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv1999

Energetics of the oxidation and opening of a carbon nanotube

We apply first principles calculations to study the opening of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT's) by oxidation. We show that an oxygen rim can stabilize the edge of the open tube. The sublimation of CO$_2$ molecules from the rim with the subsequent closing of the tube changes from endothermic to exothermic as the tube radius increases, within the range of experimental feasible radii. We also obtain the energies for opening the tube at the cap and at the wall, the latter being significantly less favorable.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv1999

Stiff monatomic gold wires with a spinning zigzag geometry

Using first principles density functional calculations, gold monatomic wires are found to exhibit a zigzag shape which remains under tension, becoming linear just before breaking. At room temperature they are found to spin, what explains the extremely long apparent interatomic distances shown by electron microscopy.The zigzag structure is stable if the tension is relieved, the wire holding its chainlike shape even as a free-standing cluster. This unexpected metallic-wire stiffness stems from the transverse quantization in the wire, as shown in a simple free electron model.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv1999

Linear-scaling ab-initio calculations for large and complex systems

A brief review of the SIESTA project is presented in the context of linear-scaling density-functional methods for electronic-structure calculations and molecular-dynamics simulations of systems with a large number of atoms. Applications of the method to different systems are reviewed, including carbon nanotubes, gold nanostructures, adsorbates on silicon surfaces, and nucleic acids. Also, progress in atomic-orbital bases adapted to linear-scaling methodology is presented.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv1998

Metallic Surface Reconstruction Driven by Frustrated Antiferromagnetism

A magnetic origin for the honeycomb reconstruction of metallic surfaces with three-fold symmetry like Pb/Ge (111) is proposed. Assuming that the groundstate is an antiferromagnetic insulator over the triangular lattice of adatom sites (Pb), we demonstrate that the former is simultaneously unstable to canting and to a structural distortion if the surface is soft enough. We therefore predict a net magnetization over the reconstructed surface at sufficiently low temperature.

cond-mat.str-el↗