arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Th. Frauenheim.
We carried out first-principles density functional theory calculations of hydrogen and oxygen adsorption and diffusion on subnanometer MoS nanowires. The nanowires are robust against adsorption of hydrogen. On the other hand, interaction with oxygen shows that the nanowires can oxidize with a small barrier. Our results open the path for understanding the behavior of MoS nanowires under realistic environment.
We perform first-principles calculations of electronic and dielectric properties of bismuthene functionalized with small ligands using first-principle calculations. We show that all functionalized structures have topological insulating (TI) behavior with a sizeable gap by calculating the Z$_2$ topological invariant. Furthermore the adsorption of all groups induce a quasi-planar structure to the initially pristine bismuthene structure. Finally we show that the dielectric properties show a large anisotropy with two main in plane absorption peaks.
In this work we have employed density-functional theory with hybrid functionals to investigate the atomic and electronic structure of bare and hydrogenated Mn doped ZnO nanowires with small diameter. We determine changes in magnetic and electronic structure of Mn-doped ZnO nanowires due to surface effects, such as hydrogen adsorption on the surface, presence of oxygen vacancies and dangling bonds. In the absence of passivation on the nanowire surface, the manganese atoms segregate to the surface, whereas under hydrogen adsorption the incorporation of Mn is energetically more favourable at inner sites. The presence of additional oxygen vacancies does not produce signficant changes in magnetic moments, although it produce significant changes in charge localization.
In this work we have employed density-functional theory with hybrid functionals to investigate the atomic and electronic structure of bare and hydrogenated Co doped ZnO nanowires. We find that in the absence of passivation on the nanowire surface, the cobalt atoms segregate to the surface. On the other hand, under hydrogen passivation, the incorporation of Co is more favorable at inner sites. This suggests that the incorporation of Co in nanostructures has a dependence on the environment and may be facilitated by external atoms and relaxation of the surface.
The role of intrinsic defects has been investigated to determine binding energies and the electronic structure of Gd complexes in ZnO. We use density-functional theory and the GW method to show that the presence of vacancies and interstitials affect the electronic structure of Gd doped ZnO. However, the strong localization of the Gd-$f$ and $d$ states suggest that carrier mediated ferromagnetism in this material may be difficult to achieve.
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is supposed to be a building block for quantum computing and nanometer scale metrology at ambient conditions. Therefore, precise knowledge of its quantum states is crucial. Here, we experimentally show that under usual operating conditions the NV exists in an equilibrium of two charge states (70% in the expected negative (NV-) and 30% in the neutral one (NV0)). Projective quantum non-demolition measurement of the nitrogen nuclear spin enables the detection even of the additional, optically inactive state. The nuclear spin can be coherently driven also in NV0 (T1 ~ 90 ms and T2 ~ 6 micro-s).
An approximate method based on adiabatic time dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) is presented, that allows for the description of the electron dynamics in nanoscale junctions under arbitrary time dependent external potentials. In this scheme, the density matrix of the device region is propagated according to the Liouville-von Neumann equation. The semi-infinite leads give rise to dissipative terms in the equation of motion which are calculated from first principles in the wide band limit. In contrast to earlier {\em ab-initio} implementations of this formalism, the Hamiltonian is here approximated by a density expansion in the spirit of the density functional based tight-binding (DFTB) method without introducing empirical parameters. Results are presented for two prototypical molecular devices and compared to calculations at the full TDDFT level. The issue of non-existence of a steady state under certain conditions is also briefly touched on.
Using an approximate time-dependent density functional theory method, we calculate the absorption and luminescence spectra for hydrogen passivated silicon nanoscale structures with large aspect ratio. The effect of electron confinement in axial and radial directions is systematically investigated. Excited state relaxation leads to significant Stokes shifts for short nanorods with lengths less than 2 nm, but has little effect on the luminescence intensity. The formation of self-trapped excitons is likewise observed for short nanostructures only; longer wires exhibit fully delocalized excitons with neglible geometrical distortion at the excited state minimum.
We study heating and heat dissipation of a single \c60 molecule in the junction of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) by measuring the electron current required to thermally decompose the fullerene cage. The power for decomposition varies with electron energy and reflects the molecular resonance structure. When the STM tip contacts the fullerene the molecule can sustain much larger currents. Transport simulations explain these effects by molecular heating due to resonant electron-phonon coupling and molecular cooling by vibrational decay into the tip upon contact formation.
We have studied the influence of alloying copper with amorphous arsenic sulfide on the electronic properties of this material. In our computer-generated models, copper is found in two-fold near-linear and four-fold square-planar configurations, which apparently correspond to Cu(I) and Cu(II) oxidation states. The number of overcoordinated atoms, both arsenic and sulfur, grows with increasing concentration of copper. Overcoordinated sulfur is found in trigonal planar configuration, and overcoordinated (four-fold) arsenic is in tetrahedral configuration. Addition of copper suppresses the localization of lone-pair electrons on chalcogen atoms, and localized states at the top of the valence band are due to Cu 3d orbitals. Evidently, these additional Cu states, which are positioned at the same energies as the states due to ([As4]-)-([S_3]+) pairs, are responsible for masking photodarkening in Cu chalcogenides.
A mixed quantum-classical approach to simulate the coupled dynamics of electrons and nuclei in nanoscale molecular systems is presented. The method relies on a second order expansion of the Lagrangian in time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) around a suitable reference density. We show that the inclusion of the second order term renders the method a self-consistent scheme and improves the calculated optical spectra of molecules by a proper treatment of the coupled response. In the application to ion-fullerene collisions, the inclusion of self-consistency is found to be crucial for a correct description of the charge transfer between projectile and target. For a model of the photoreceptor in retinal proteins, nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations are performed and reveal problems of TDDFT in the prediction of intra-molecular charge transfer excitations.
We present a tight-binding based GW approach for the calculation of quasiparticle energy levels in confined systems such as molecules. Key quantities in the GW formalism like the microscopic dielectric function or the screened Coulomb interaction are expressed in a minimal basis of spherically averaged atomic orbitals. All necessary integrals are either precalculated or approximated without resorting to empirical data. The method is validated against first principles results for benzene and anthracene, where good agreement is found for levels close to the frontier orbitals. Further, the size dependence of the quasiparticle gap is studied for conformers of the polyacenes ($C_{4n+2}H_{2n+4}$) up to n = 30.
We report on density-functional-based tight-binding (DFTB) simulations of a series of amorphous arsenic sulfide models. In addition to the charged coordination defects previously proposed to exist in chalcogenide glasses, a novel defect pair, [As4]--[S3]+, consisting of a four-fold coordinated arsenic site in a seesaw configuration and a three-fold coordinated sulfur site in a planar trigonal configuration, was found in several models. The valence-alternation pairs S3+-S1- are converted into [As4]--[S3]+ pairs under HOMO-to-LUMO electronic excitation. This structural transformation is accompanied by a decrease in the size of the HOMO-LUMO band gap, which suggests that such transformations could contribute to photo-darkening in these materials.
We have used a density-functional-based tight-binding method in order to create structural models of the canonical chalcogenide glass, amorphous (a-)As$_2$S$_3$. The models range from one containing defects that are both chemical (homopolar bonds) and topological (valence-alternation pairs) in nature to one that is defect-free (stoichiometric). The structural, vibrational and electronic properties of the simulated models are in good agreement with experimental data where available. The electronic densities of states obtained for all models show clean optical band gaps. A certain degree of electron-state localization at the band edges is observed for all models, which suggests that photoinduced phenomena in chalcogenide glasses may not necessarily be attributed to the excitation of defects of only one particular kind.
We present a study of the effects of Nitrogen and Boron doping on the growth of CVD diamond in the (100) mechanism. These are the first calculations of this type and show that, in accordance with recent experimental results, the presently accepted growth mechanism, that due to Harris, is cataylsed by the presence of subsurface Boron impurities. In contrast, we find that the Harris Mechanism cannot explain growth in the presence of subsurface N and suggest an alternative mechanism.