The enthalpy landscape of CaC(2) was investigated on the ab initio level, and possible (meta)stable structures are predicted. Simulated annealing was used as a global exploration method for the determination of the local minima on the enthalpy landscapes, where the only information supplied was the number of atoms per unit cell. Subsequently, the structure candidates found were locally optimized. At all stages of the search, the energy calculations were performed on the ab initio level. Furthermore, we investigated the enthalpies of different modifications as a function of pressure, and we found that, at a transition pressure of about 30 GPa, CaC(2) should transform from a 6-fold coordinated structure resembling a rock-salt structure to an 8-fold coordinated one similar to the CsCl structure. At standard pressure, two new energetically low-lying (metastable) structures were found, and at high pressure an additional new metastable structure was also predicted to be capable of existence.

Metal-pernitride compounds belong to a class of chemical systems in which both the complex ions and the non-bonding electrons may play roles in the formation of their modified crystalline structures. To investigate this issue, the energy landscapes of pernitrides of metals with different maximum valence (M=Ca, Sr, Ba, La, and Ti) were globally explored on the ab initio level at standard and high pressures, thereby yielding possible (meta)stable modifications in these systems together with information on how the landscape changed as function of the valence of the metal cation. For all of the systems in which no compounds had been synthesized so far, we predicted the existence of kinetically stable modifications that should, in principle, be experimentally accessible. In particular, TiN2 should crystallize in a new structure type, TiN2-I.

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Based on ab initio calculations at various pressures meta(stable) modifications of CaN2, LaN2, and TiN2 are predicted.

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