We report a comparative study of temperature-dependent photoluminescence and structural dynamics of two perovskite semiconductors, the chalcogenide BaZrS3 3 and the halide CsPbBr3. 3 . These materials have similar crystal structures and direct band gaps, but we find that they have quite distinct optoelectronic and vibrational properties. Both materials exhibit thermally activated nonradiative recombination, but the nonradiative recombination rate in BaZrS3 3 is four orders of magnitude faster than in CsPbBr3, 3 , for the crystals studied here. Raman spectroscopy reveals that the effects of phonon anharmonicity are far more pronounced in CsPbBr3 3 than in BaZrS3. 3 . Further, although both materials feature a large dielectric response due to low-energy polar optical phonons, the phonons in CsPbBr3 3 are substantially lower in energy than in BaZrS3. 3 . Our results suggest that electron-phonon coupling in BaZrS3 3 is more effective at nonradiative recombination than in CsPbBr3 3 and that BaZrS3 3 may also have a substantially higher concentration of nonradiative recombination centers than CsPbBr3. 3 . The low defect concentration in CsPbBr3 3 may be related to the ease of lattice reconfiguration, typified by anharmonic bonding. It remains to be seen to what extent these differences are inherent to the chalcogenide and halide perovskites and to what extent they can be affected by materials processing.

Lead-based halide perovskite crystals are shown to have strongly anharmonic structural dynamics. This behavior is important because it may be the origin of their exceptional photovoltaic properties. The double perovskite, Cs2AgBiBr6, has been recently studied as a lead-free alternative for optoelectronic applications. However, it does not exhibit the excellent photovoltaic activity of the lead-based halide perovskites. Therefore, to explore the correlation between the anharmonic structural dynamics and optoelectronic properties in lead-based halide perovskites, the structural dynamics of Cs2AgBiBr6 are investigated and are compared to its lead-based analog, CsPbBr3. Using temperature-dependent Raman measurements, it is found that both materials are indeed strongly anharmonic. Nonetheless, the expression of their anharmonic behavior is markedly different. Cs2AgBiBr6 has well-defined normal modes throughout the measured temperature range, while CsPbBr3 exhibits a complete breakdown of the normal-mode picture above 200 K. It is suggested that the breakdown of the normal-mode picture implies that the average crystal structure may not be a proper starting point to understand the electronic properties of the crystal. In addition to our main findings, an unreported phase of Cs2AgBiBr6 is also discovered below approximate to 37 K.

The prototypical antiferroelectric PbZrO3 has several unsettled questions, such as the nature of the antiferroelectric transition, a possible intermediate phase, and the microscopic origin of the Pbam ground state. Using first-principles calculations, we show that no phonon becomes truly soft at the cubic-to-Pbam transition temperature, and the order-disorder character of this transition is clearly demonstrated based on molecular dynamics simulations and potential energy surfaces. The out-of-phase octahedral tilting is an important degree of freedom, which can collaborate with other phonon distortions and form a complex energy landscape with multiple minima Candidates of the possible intermediate phase are suggested based on the calculated kinetic barriers between energy minima, and the development of a first-principles-based effective Hamiltonian. The use of this latter scheme further reveals that specific bilinear interactions between local dipoles and octahedral tiltings play a major role in the formation of the Pbam ground state, which contrasts with most of the previous explanations.

We revisit the color-diffusion algorithm [Aeberhard et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 095901 (2012)] in non equilibrium ab initio molecular dynamics (NE-AIMD) and propose a simple efficient approach for the estimation of monovacancy jump rates in crystalline solids at temperatures well below melting. Color-diffusion applied to monovacancy migration entails that one lattice atom (colored atom) is accelerated toward the neighboring defect site by an external constant force F. Considering bcc molybdenum between 1000 and 2800 K as a model system, NE-AIMD results show that the colored-atom jump rate k(NE) increases exponentially with the force intensity F, up to F values far beyond the linear-fitting regime employed previously. Using a simple model, we derive an analytical expression which reproduces the observed k(NE)(F) dependence on F. Equilibrium rates extrapolated by NE-AIMD results are in excellent agreement with those of unconstrained dynamics. The gain in computational efficiency achieved with our approach increases rapidly with decreasing temperatures and reaches a factor of 4 orders of magnitude at the lowest temperature considered in the present study.

Wurtzite aluminium nitride is a technologically important wide band gap semiconductor with an unusually high thermal conductivity, used in optical applications and as a heatsink substrate. Many of its properties depend on an accurate description of its lattice dynamics, which have thus far only been captured in the quasiharmonic approximation. In this work, we demonstrate that anharmonicity has a considerable impact on its phase stability and transport properties, since anharmonicity is much stronger in the rocksalt phase. We compute a pressure-temperature phase diagram of AlN, demonstrating that the rocksalt phase is stabilised by increasing temperature, with respect to the wurtzite phase. We demonstrate that including anharmonicity, we can recover the thermal conductivity of the wurtzite phase (320 Wm⁻¹K⁻¹ under ambient conditions), and compute the hitherto unknown thermal conductivity of the rocksalt phase (96 Wm⁻¹K⁻¹). We also show that the electronic band gap decreases with temperature. These findings provide further evidence that anharmonic effects cannot be ignored in high temperature applications.

A first-principles nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) study employing the color-diffusion algorithm has been conducted to obtain the bulk ionic conductivity and the diffusion constant of gadolinium-doped cerium oxide (GDC) in the 850-1150 K temperature range. Being a slow process, ionic diffusion in solids usually requires simulation times that are prohibitively long for ab initio equilibrium molecular dynamics. The use of the color-diffusion algorithm allowed us to substantially speed up the oxygen-ion diffusion. The key parameters of the method, such as field direction and strength as well as color-charge distribution, have been investigated and their optimized values for the considered system have been determined. The calculated ionic conductivity and diffusion constants are in good agreement with available experimental data.

We have developed a method to accurately and efficiently determine the vibrational free energy as a function of temperature and volume for substitutional alloys from first principles. Taking Ti1_−xAl_xN alloy as a model system, we calculate the isostructural phase diagram by finding the global minimum of the free energy, corresponding to the true equilibrium state of the system. We demonstrate that the anharmonic contribution and temperature dependence of the mixing enthalpy have a decisive impact on the calculated phase diagram of a Ti1_−xAl_xN alloy, lowering the maximum temperature for the miscibility gap from 6560 K to 2860 K. Our local chemical composition measurements on thermally aged Ti_0.5Al_0.5N alloys agree with the calculated phase diagram.

Structural phase transitions in epitaxial stoichiometric VN/MgO(011) thin films are investigated using temperature-dependent synchrotron x-ray diffraction (XRD), selected-area electron diffraction (SAED), resistivity measurements, high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy, and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD). At room temperature, VN has the B1 NaCl structure. However, below T-c = 250 K, XRD and SAED results reveal forbidden (00l) reflections of mixed parity associated with a noncentrosymmetric tetragonal structure. The intensities of the forbidden reflections increase with decreasing temperature following the scaling behavior I proportional to (T-c - T)(1/2). Resistivity measurements between 300 and 4 K consist of two linear regimes resulting from different electron/phonon coupling strengths in the cubic and tetragonal-VN phases. The VN transport Eliashberg spectral function alpha F-2(tr)(h omega), the product of the phonon density of states F(h omega) and the transport electron/phonon coupling strength alpha(2)(tr)(h omega), is determined and used in combination with AIMD renormalized phonon dispersion relations to show that anharmonic vibrations stabilize the NaCl structure at T greater than T-c. Free-energy contributions due to vibrational entropy, often neglected in theoretical modeling, are essential for understanding the room-temperature stability of NaCl-structure VN, and of strongly anharmonic systems in general.

A recently developed temperature-dependent effective potential method is employed to study the martensitic phase transformation in AuZn. This method is based on ab initio molecular dynamics and allows to obtain finite-temperature lattice vibrational properties. We show that the transversal acoustic TA(2)[110] mode associated with the phase transition is stabilized at 300 K. Temperature evolution of single-phonon dynamic structure factor at the wave vector q= 1/3[1,1,0], associated with phonon softening and Fermi surface nesting, was also studied. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

We have developed a method to accurately and efficiently determine the vibrational free energy as a function of temperature and pressure for substitutional alloys from first principles. Taking the example of the technologically important hard coating alloy Ti1-xAlxN as an example, we investigate the effect on the vibrational free energy of substituting Ti for other group IV elements. By constructing the phase diagrams for these three alloys, we show why Zr_1-xAl_xN and Hf_1-xAl_xN are so difficult to experimentally synthesise in a metastable solid solution: both have solubility regions that span only a small low-AlN concentration range at temperatures above 1500 K. Moreover, Hf_1-xAl_xN is dynamically unstable at low temperatures and across most of the concentration range. We also show the chemical and thermal expansion effects dominate mass disorder in the Gibbs free energy of mixing.