Case of the Bromine Vacancy in Cs4PbBr6.

Typically defect tolerance is equated with a lack of deleterious defects or with abundant defects creating only shallow levels. Here, we address the idea that deep defects, when unavoidable, do not guarantee harmful consequences. Using halogen vacancy as a common defect among halides, we explore its behavior in Cs4PbBr6. It is a large gap material (band gap of ∼4 eV) known for its green emission at ∼520 nm. We show that its Br-vacancy is indeed a deep defect as obtained from hybrid density functional calculations. An analysis of the configuration coordinate diagram corresponding to the defect's charge transition levels enables us to conclude that the nonradiative recombination cycle will be hampered by an extremely slow hole capture process. Therefore, Br-vacancy will not suppress light emission in Cs4PbBr6. Although this finding does not signal that all deep defects will behave similarly, it indicates that defect tolerance may be achievable despite their occurrence.

Breakdown of the scaling relation of anomalous Hall effect in Kondo lattice ferromagnet USbTe.

The interaction between strong correlation and Berry curvature is an open territory of in the field of quantum materials. Here we report large anomalous Hall conductivity in a Kondo lattice ferromagnet USbTe which is dominated by intrinsic Berry curvature at low temperatures. However, the Berry curvature induced anomalous Hall effect does not follow the scaling relation derived from Fermi liquid theory. The onset of the Berry curvature contribution coincides with the Kondo coherent temperature. Combined with ARPES measurement and DMFT calculations, this strongly indicates that Berry curvature is hosted by the flat bands induced by Kondo hybridization at the Fermi level. Our results demonstrate that the Kondo coherence of the flat bands has a dramatic influence on the low temperature physical properties associated with the Berry curvature, calling for new theories of scaling relations of anomalous Hall effect to account for the interaction between strong correlation and Berry curvature.

Size-Dependent Nucleation in Crystal Phase Transition from Machine Learning Metadynamics.

In this Letter, we present a framework that combines machine learning potential (MLP) and metadynamics to investigate solid-solid phase transition. Based on the spectral descriptors and neural networks regression, we develop a scalable MLP model to warrant an accurate interpolation of the energy surface where two phases coexist. Applying it to the simulation of B4-B1 phase transition of GaN under 50 GPa with different model sizes, we observe sequential change of the phase transition mechanism from collective modes to nucleation and growths. When the size is at or below 128 000 atoms, the nucleation and growth appear to follow a preferred direction. At larger sizes, the nuclei occur at multiple sites simultaneously and grow to microstructures by passing the critical size. The observed change of the atomistic mechanism manifests the importance of statistical sampling with large system size in phase transition modeling.

Modeling surface spin polarization on ceria-supported Pt nanoparticles.

In this work, we employ density functional theory simulations to investigate possible spin polarization of CeO2-(111) surface and its impact on the interactions between a ceria support and Pt nanoparticles. With a Gaussian type orbital basis, our simulations suggest that the CeO2-(111) surface exhibits a robust surface spin polarization due to the internal charge transfer between atomic Ce and O layers. In turn, it can lower the surface oxygen vacancy formation energy and enhance the oxide reducibility. We show that the inclusion of spin polarization can significantly reduce the major activation barrier in the proposed reaction pathway of CO oxidation on ceria-supported Pt nanoparticles. For metal-support interactions, surface spin polarization enhances the bonding between Pt nanoparticles and ceria surface oxygen, while CO adsorption on Pt nanoparticles weakens the interfacial interaction regardless of spin polarization. However, the stable surface spin polarization can only be found in the simulations based on the Gaussian type orbital basis. Given the potential importance in the design of future high-performance catalysts, our present study suggests a pressing need to examine the surface ferromagnetism of transition metal oxides in both experiment and theory.

Temperature-dependent optical properties of self-doped superconducting Fe-pnictide, Sr2VO3FeAs.

We performed an infrared spectroscopic study on a single crystal of Sr2VO3FeAs grown by a self-flux method. This layered material system consists of two alternative layers of [SrVO3]-1 and [SrFeAs]+1. Since the typical size of single crystalline Sr2VO3FeAs samples is 200 [Formula: see text] 200 [Formula: see text] 10 [Formula: see text]m3 an optical study on this material is challenging. We observed an additional interband transition around 1000 cm-1, which is absent in other doped Ba-122 Fe-pnictides. The origin of this additional transition is not clearly known yet. We also observed a hidden Fermi liquid behavior. Interestingly, we observed a Fano line-shaped phonon which appears near 555 cm-1 below 200 K and shows a strong blue-shift when the temperature is lowered. The amplitude, width, and asymmetric Fano parameter of this phonon show anomalies at 150 K, which are probably related to an electronic phase observed below 155 K recently by an NMR study (Ok et al 2017 Nat. Commun. 8 2167). Our finding may help to understand the electronic phase observed previously in the same material.

Exploring Polaronic, Excitonic Structures and Luminescence in Cs4PbBr6/CsPbBr3.

Among the important family of halide perovskites, one particular case of all-inorganic, 0-D Cs4PbBr6 and 3-D CsPbBr3-based nanostructures and thin films is witnessing intense activity due to ultrafast luminescence with high quantum yield. To understand their emissive behavior, we use hybrid density functional calculations to first compare the ground-state electronic structure of the two prospective compounds. The dispersive band edges of CsPbBr3 do not support self-trapped carriers, which agrees with reports of weak exciton binding energy and high photocurrent. The larger gap 0-D material Cs4PbBr6, however, reveals polaronic and excitonic features. We show that those lattice-coupled carriers are likely responsible for observed ultraviolet emission around ∼375 nm, reported in bulk Cs4PbBr6 and Cs4PbBr6/CsPbBr3 composites. Ionization potential calculations and estimates of type-I band alignment support the notion of quantum confinement leading to fast, green emission from CsPbBr3 nanostructures embedded in Cs4PbBr6.

Shallow trapping vs. deep polarons in a hybrid lead halide perovskite, CH3NH3PbI3.

There has been considerable speculation over the nature of charge carriers in organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, i.e., whether they are free and band-like, or they are prone to self-trapping via short range deformation potentials. Unusually long minority-carrier diffusion lengths and moderate-to-low mobilities, together with relatively few deep defects add to their intrigue. Here we implement density functional methods to investigate the room-temperature, tetragonal phase of CH3NH3PbI3. We compare charge localization behavior at shallow levels and associated lattice relaxation versus those at deep polaronic states. The shallow level originates from screened Coulomb interaction between the perturbed host and an excited electron or hole. The host lattice has a tendency towards forming these shallow traps where the electron or hole is localized not too far from the band edge. In contrast, there is a considerable potential barrier that must be overcome in order to initiate polaronic hole trapping. The formation of a hole polaron (I2- center) involves strong lattice relaxation, including large off-center displacement of the organic cation, CH3NH3+. This type of deep polaron is energetically unfavorable, and active shallow traps are expected to shape the carrier dynamics in this material.