An accurate and easily extendable method to deal with lattice dynamics of solids is offered. It is based on first-principles molecular dynamics simulations and provides a consistent way to extract the best possible harmonic-or higher order-potential energy surface at finite temperatures. It is designed to work even for strongly anharmonic systems where the traditional quasiharmonic approximation fails. The accuracy and convergence of the method are controlled in a straightforward way. Excellent agreement of the calculated phonon dispersion relations at finite temperature with experimental results for bcc Li and bcc Zr is demonstrated.Funding Agencies|Swedish Research Council (VR)|

We describe an efficient first-principles method that can be used to calculate mixing enthalpies of transition metal nitrides with B1 structure and substitutional disorder at the metal sublattice. The technique is based on the density functional theory. The independent sublattice model is suggested for the treatment of disorderinduced local lattice relaxation effects. It supplements the description of the substitutional disorder within the coherent potential approximation. We demonstrate the excellent accuracy of the method by comparison with calculations performed by means of the projector augumented wave method on supercells constructed as special quasirandom structures. At the same time, the efficiency of the technique allows for total energy calculations on a very fine mesh of concentrations which enables a reliable calculation of the second concentration derivative of the alloy total energy. This is a first step towards first-principles predictions of concentrations and temperature intervals where the alloy decomposition proceeds via the spinodal mechanism. We thus calculate electronic structure, lattice parameter, and mixing enthalpies of the quasibinary alloy c-Ti 1−x Al x N. The lattice parameter follows Vegard's law at low fractions of AlN but deviates increasingly with increasing Al content. We show that the asymmetry of the mixing enthalpy and its second concentration derivative is associated with substantial variations of the electronic structure with alloy composition. The phase diagram is constructed within the mean-field approximation.

We report on the results of a systematic ab initio study of the magnetic structure of Fe rich fcc FeNi binary alloys for Ni concentrations up to 50 at. %. Calculations are carried out within density-functional theory using two complementary techniques, one based on the exact muffin-tin orbital theory within the coherent potential approximation and another one based on the projector augmented-wave method. We observe that the evolution of the magnetic structure of the alloy with increasing Ni concentration is determined by a competition between a large number of magnetic states, collinear as well as noncollinear, all close in energy. We emphasize a series of transitions between these magnetic structures, in particular we have investigated a competition between disordered local moment configurations, spin spiral states, the double layer antiferromagnetic state, and the ferromagnetic phase, as well as the ferrimagnetic phase with a single spin flipped with respect to all others. We show that the latter should be particularly important for the understanding of the magnetic structure of the Invar alloys.

We employ state-of-the-art ab initio simulations within the dynamical mean-field theory to study three likely phases of iron (hcp, fcc, and bcc) at the Earth's core conditions. We demonstrate that the correction to the electronic free energy due to correlations can be significant for the relative stability of the phases. The strongest effect is observed in bcc Fe, which shows a non-Fermi-liquid behavior, and where a Curie-Weiss behavior of the uniform susceptibility hints at a local magnetic moment still existing at 5800 K and 300 GPa. We predict that all three structures have sufficiently high magnetic susceptibility to stabilize the geodynamo.

The electronic state and transport properties of hot dense iron are of the utmost importance for the understanding of Earth's interior. Combining state-of-the-art density functional and dynamical mean field theories we study the impact of electron correlations on the electrical and thermal resistivity of hexagonal close-packed ò-Fe at Earth's core conditions and show that the electron-electron scattering in ò-Fe exhibit a nearly perfect Fermi-liquid (FL) behavior. Accordingly, the quadratic dependence of the scattering rate, typical of FLs, leads to a modification of the Wiedemann-Franz law and suppresses the thermal conductivity with respect to the electrical one. The consequence is a significant increase of the electron-electron thermal resistivity, which is found to be of comparable magnitude to the electron-phonon one.

The authors have used density functional theory calculations to investigate how the redox thermodynamics and kinetics of CeO2 are influenced by forming solid solutions with TiO2, ZrO2, HfO2, and ThO2. Reduction is facilitated by dissolving TiO2 (largest improvement), HfO2, or ZrO2 (least improvement), while ThO2 makes reduction slightly more difficult. The migration barrier is much lower in the neighborhood of a Ti (largest decrease), Hf, or Zr (least decrease), while the binding energy of solute ions and vacancies increases in the same sequence. They rationalize the properties of ceria solid solutions in terms of defect cluster relaxations.

No abstract

, Firstprinciples study of configurational disorder in B4C using a superatom-special quasirandom structure method, 2014, Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, (90) Configurationally disordered crystalline boron carbide, with the composition B 4 C, is studied using firstprinciples calculations. We investigate both dilute and high concentrations of carbon-boron substitutional defects. For the latter purpose, we suggest a superatom's picture of the complex structure and combine it with a special quasirandom structure approach for disorder. In this way, we model a random distribution of high concentrations of the identified low-energy defects: (1) bipolar defects and (2) rotation of icosahedral carbon among the three polar-up sites. Additionally, the substitutional disorder of the icosahedral carbon at all six polar sites, as previously discussed in the literature, is also considered. Two configurational phase transitions from the ordered to the disordered configurations are predicted to take place upon an increase in temperature using a mean-field approximation for the entropy. The first transition, at 870 K, induces substitutional disorder of the icosahedral carbon atoms among the three polar-up sites; meanwhile the second transition, at 2325 K, reveals the random substitution of the icosahedral carbon atoms at all six polar sites coexisting with bipolar defects. Already the first transition removes the monoclinic distortion existing in the ordered ground-state configuration and restore the rhombohedral system (R3m). The restoration of inversion symmetry yielding the full rhombohedral symmetry (R3m) on average, corresponding to what is reported in the literature, is achieved after the second transition. Investigating the effects of high pressure on the configurational stability of the disordered B 4 C phases reveals a tendency to stabilize the ordered ground-state configuration as the configurationally ordering/disordering transition temperature increases with pressure exerted on B 4 C. The electronic density of states, obtained from the disordered phases, indicates a sensitivity of the band gap to the degree of configurational disorder in B 4 C.