Auger electron emission initiated by the creation of valence-band holes in graphene by positron annihilation.

Auger processes involving the filling of holes in the valence band are thought to make important contributions to the low-energy photoelectron and secondary electron spectrum from many solids. However, measurements of the energy spectrum and the efficiency with which electrons are emitted in this process remain elusive due to a large unrelated background resulting from primary beam-induced secondary electrons. Here, we report the direct measurement of the energy spectra of electrons emitted from single layer graphene as a result of the decay of deep holes in the valence band. These measurements were made possible by eliminating competing backgrounds by employing low-energy positrons (<1.25 eV) to create valence-band holes by annihilation. Our experimental results, supported by theoretical calculations, indicate that between 80 and 100% of the deep valence-band holes in graphene are filled via an Auger transition.

Structural and electronic properties of defects at grain boundaries in CuInSe2.

We report on a first-principles study of the structural and electronic properties of a Σ3 (112) grain boundary model in CuInSe2. The study focuses on a coherent, stoichiometry preserving, cation-Se terminated grain boundary, addressing the properties of the grain boundary as such, as well as the effect of well known defects in CuInSe2. We show that in spite of its apparent simplicity, such a grain boundary exhibits a very rich phenomenology, providing an explanation for several of the experimentally observed properties of grain boundaries in CuInSe2 thin films. In particular, we show that the combined effect of Cu vacancies and cation antisites can result in the observed Cu depletion with no In enrichment at the grain boundaries. Furthermore, Cu vacancies are unlikely to produce a hole barrier at the grain boundaries, but Na may indeed have such an effect. We find that Na-on-Cu defects will tend to form abundantly at the grain boundaries, and can provide a mechanism for the carrier depletion and/or type inversion experimentally reported.

The role of the VZn-NO-H complex in the p-type conductivity in ZnO.

Past research efforts aiming at obtaining stable p-type ZnO have been based on complexes involving nitrogen doping. A recent experiment by (J. G. Reynolds et al., Appl. Phys. Lett., 2013, 102, 152114) demonstrated a significant (∼10(18) cm(-3)) p-type behavior in N-doped ZnO films after appropriate annealing. The p-type conductivity was attributed to a VZn-NO-H shallow acceptor complex, formed by a Zn vacancy (VZn), N substituting O (NO), and H interstitial (Hi). We present here a first-principles hybrid functional study of this complex compared to the one without hydrogen. Our results confirm that the VZn-NO-H complex acts as an acceptor in ZnO. We find that H plays an important role, because it lowers the formation energy of the complex with respect to VZn-NO, a complex known to exhibit (unstable) p-type behavior. However, this additional H atom also occupies the hole level at the origin of the shallow behavior of VZn-NO, leaving only two states empty higher in the band gap and making the VZn-NO-H complex a deep acceptor. Therefore, we conclude that the cause of the observed p-type conductivity in experiment is not the presence of the VZn-NO-H complex, but probably the formation of the VZn-NO complex during the annealing process.

Native point defects in CuIn(1-x)Ga(x)Se2: hybrid density functional calculations predict the origin of p- and n-type conductivity.

We have performed a first-principles study of the p- and n-type conductivity in CuIn(1-x)Ga(x)Se2 due to native point defects, based on the HSE06 hybrid functional. Band alignment shows that the band gap becomes larger with x due to the increasing conduction band minimum, rendering it hard to establish n-type conductivity in CuGaSe2. From the defect formation energies, we find that In/GaCu is a shallow donor, while V(Cu), V(In/Ga) and Cu(In/Ga) act as shallow acceptors. Using the total charge neutrality of ionized defects and intrinsic charge carriers to determine the Fermi level, we show that under In-rich growth conditions InCu causes strongly n-type conductivity in CuInSe2. Under increasingly In-poor growth conditions, the conductivity type in CuInSe2 alters to p-type and compensation of the acceptors by In(Cu) reduces, as also observed in photoluminescence experiments. In CuGaSe2, the native acceptors pin the Fermi level far away from the conduction band minimum, thus inhibiting n-type conductivity. On the other hand, CuGaSe2 shows strong p-type conductivity under a wide range of Ga-poor growth conditions. Maximal p-type conductivity in CuIn(1-x)Ga(x)Se2 is reached under In/Ga-poor growth conditions, in agreement with charge concentration measurements on samples with In/Ga-poor stoichiometry, and is primarily due to the dominant acceptor Cu(In/Ga).

The origin of p-type conductivity in ZnM2O4 (M = Co, Rh, Ir) spinels.

ZnM2O4 (M = Co, Rh, Ir) spinels are considered as a class of potential p-type transparent conducting oxides (TCOs). We report the formation energy of acceptor-like defects using first principles calculations with an advanced hybrid exchange-correlation functional (HSE06) within density functional theory (DFT). Due to the discrepancies between the theoretically obtained band gaps with this hybrid functional and the - scattered - experimental results, we also perform GW calculations to support the validity of the description of these spinels with the HSE06 functional. The considered defects are the cation vacancy and antisite defects, which are supposed to be the leading source of disorder in the spinel structures. We also discuss the band alignments in these spinels. The calculated formation energies indicate that the antisite defects ZnM (Zn replacing M, M = Co, Rh, Ir) and VZn act as shallow acceptors in ZnCo2O4, ZnRh2O4 and ZnIr2O4, which explains the experimentally observed p-type conductivity in those systems. Moreover, our systematic study indicates that the ZnIr antisite defect has the lowest formation energy in the group and it corroborates the highest p-type conductivity reported for ZnIr2O4 among the group of ZnM2O4 spinels. To gain further insight into factors affecting the p-type conductivity, we have also investigated the formation of localized small polarons by calculating the self-trapping energy of the holes.

Perovskite transparent conducting oxides: an ab initio study.

We present an ab initio study of the electronic structure and of the formation energies of various point defects in BaSnO3 and SrGeO3. We show that La and Y impurities substituting Ba or Sr are shallow donors with a preferred 1 + charge state. These defects have a low formation energy within all the suitable equilibrium growth conditions considered. Oxygen vacancies behave as shallow donors as well, preferring the 2 + charge state. Their formation energies, however, are higher in most growth conditions, indicating a limited contribution to conductivity. The calculated electron effective mass in BaSnO3, with a value of 0.21 m(e), and the very high mobility reported recently in La-doped BaSnO3 single-crystals, suggest that remarkably low scattering rates can be achieved in the latter. In the case of SrGeO3, our results point to carrier density and mobility values in the low range for typical polycrystalline TCOs, in line with experiment.

Electronic structure of transparent oxides with the Tran-Blaha modified Becke-Johnson potential.

We present electronic band structures of transparent oxides calculated using the Tran-Blaha modified Becke-Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential. We studied the basic n-type conducting binary oxides In(2)O(3), ZnO, CdO and SnO(2) along with the p-type conducting ternary oxides delafossite CuXO(2) (X=Al, Ga, In) and spinel ZnX(2)O(4) (X=Co, Rh, Ir). The results are presented for calculated band gaps and effective electron masses. We discuss the improvements in the band gap determination using TB-mBJ compared to the standard generalized gradient approximation (GGA) in density functional theory (DFT) and also compare the electronic band structure with available results from the quasiparticle GW method. It is shown that the calculated band gaps compare well with the experimental and GW results, although the electron effective mass is generally overestimated.

The quasiparticle band structure of zincblende and rocksalt ZnO.

We present the quasiparticle band structure of ZnO in its zincblende (ZB) and rocksalt (RS) phases at the Γ point, calculated within the GW approximation. The effect of the p-d hybridization on the quasiparticle corrections to the band gap is discussed. We compare three systems, ZB-ZnO which shows strong p-d hybridization and has a direct band gap, RS-ZnO which is also hybridized but includes inversion symmetry and therefore has an indirect band gap, and ZB-ZnS which shows a weaker hybridization due to a change of the chemical species from oxygen to sulfur. The quasiparticle corrections are calculated with different numbers of valence electrons in the Zn pseudopotential. We find that the Zn(20+) pseudopotential is essential for the adequate treatment of the exchange interaction in the self-energy. The calculated GW band gaps are 2.47 eV and 4.27 eV respectively, for the ZB and RS phases. The ZB-ZnO band gap is underestimated compared to the experimental value of 3.27 by ∼ 0.8 eV. The RS-ZnO band gap compares well with the experimental value of 4.5 eV. The underestimation for ZB-ZnO is correlated with the strong p-d hybridization. The GW band gap for ZnS is 3.57 eV, compared to the experimental value of 3.8 eV.

Surface-stabilized nonferromagnetic ordering of a layered ferromagnetic manganite.

An outstanding question regarding the probing or possible device applications of correlated electronic materials (CEMs) with layered structure is the extent to which their bulk and surface properties differ or not. The broken translational symmetry at the surface can lead to distinct functionality due to the charge, lattice, orbital, and spin coupling. Here we report on the case of bilayered manganites with hole doping levels corresponding to bulk ferromagnetic order. We find that, although the hole doping level is measured to be the same as in the bulk, the surface layer is not ferromagnetic. Further, our low-energy electron diffraction and x-ray measurements show that there is a c-axis collapse in the outermost layer. Bulk theoretical calculations reveal that, even at fixed doping level, the relaxation of the Jahn-Teller distortion at the surface is consistent with the stabilization of an A-type antiferromagnetic state.

Orbital mixing and nesting in the bilayer manganites La2-2xSr1+2xMn2O7.

A first principles study of La2-2xSr1+2xMn2O7 compounds for doping levels 0.3 < or = x < or = 0.5 shows that the low energy electronic structure of the majority spin carriers is determined by strong momentum-dependent interactions between the Mn eg dx2-y2 and d3z2-r2 orbitals, which, in addition to an x-dependent Jahn-Teller distortion, differ in the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases. The Fermi surface exhibits nesting behavior that is reflected by peaks in the static susceptibility, whose positions as a function of momentum have a nontrivial dependence on x.

Physisorption of positronium on quartz surfaces.

Whether positronium (Ps) can be physisorbed on a material surface is of great fundamental interest, since it can lead to new insight regarding quantum sticking and is a necessary first step to try to obtain a Ps2 molecule on a material host. Experiments in the past have produced evidence for physisorbed Ps on a quartz surface, but firm theoretical support for such a conclusion was lacking. We present a first-principles density-functional calculation of the key parameters determining the interaction potential between Ps and an alpha-quartz surface. We show that there is indeed a bound state with an energy of 0.14 eV, a value which agrees very well with the experimental estimate of approximately 0.15 eV. Further, a brief energy analysis invoking the Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism for the reaction of physisorbed atoms shows that the formation and desorption of a Ps2 molecule in that picture is consistent with the above results.