Suchergebnisse

An ab initio study of β−As2Te3 (R¯3m symmetry) at hydrostatic pressures shows that this compound is a trivial small band-gap semiconductor at room pressure that undergoes a quantum topological phase transition to a 3D topological Dirac semimetal around 2 GPa. At higher pressures, the band gap reopens and again decreases above 4 GPa. Our calculations predict an insulator-metal transition above 6 GPa due to the closing of the band gap, with strong topological features persisting between 2 and 10 GPa with Z4=3 topological index. By investigating the lattice thermal conductivity (κL), we observe that close to room conditions κL is very low, either for the in-plane and the out-of-plane axis, with 0.098 and 0.023Wm−1K−1, respectively. This effect occurs due to the presence of two low-frequency optical modes, namely Eu and Eg, which increase the phonon-phonon scattering rate. Therefore, our results suggest that ultralow lattice thermal conductivities, which enable highly efficient thermoelectric materials, can be engineered in systems that are close to a structural instability derived from phonon Kohn anomalies. At higher pressures, the values of the in- and out-of-plane thermal conductivities not only increase in magnitude, but also approximate in value as the layered character of the compound decreases. ; This research was supported by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant No. 785789-COMEX and Project No. NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-022096, Network of Extreme Conditions Laboratories (NECL), financed by FCT and cofinanced by NORTE 2020, through the programme Portugal 2020 and FEDER. Authors also thank the financial support of the Generalitat Valenciana under Project PROMETEO 2018/123-EFIMAT and of the Agencia Española de Investigación under Projects No. MAT2016-75586-C4-2/4-P, No. FIS2017-2017-83295-P, and No. PID2019-106383GB-C42, as well as the MALTA Consolider Team research network under Project No. RED2018-102612-T. Additionally, authors acknowledge the computer resources at MareNostrum with technical support provided by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (QCM-2019-1-0032/37). ; Peer reviewed

We report a joint experimental and theoretical study of the structural, vibrational, and electronic properties of layered monoclinic arsenic sulfide crystals (α-As2S3), aka mineral orpiment, under compression. X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering measurements performed on orpiment samples at high pressure and combined with ab initio calculations have allowed us to determine the equation of state and the tentative assignment of the symmetry of many Raman-active modes of orpiment. From our results, we conclude that no first-order phase transition occurs up to 25 GPa at room temperature; however, compression leads to an isostructural phase transition above 20 GPa. In fact, the As coordination increases from threefold at room pressure to more than fivefold above 20 GPa. This increase in coordination can be understood as the transformation from a solid with covalent bonding to a solid with metavalent bonding at high pressure, which results in a progressive decrease of the electronic and optical bandgap, an increase of the dielectric tensor components and Born effective charges, and a considerable softening of many high-frequency optical modes with increasing pressure. Moreover, we propose that the formation of metavalent bonding at high pressures may also explain the behavior of other group-15 sesquichalcogenides under compression. In fact, our results suggest that group-15 sesquichalcogenides either show metavalent bonding at room pressure or undergo a transition from p-type covalent bonding at room pressure towards metavalent bonding at high pressure, as a precursor towards metallic bonding at very high pressure. ; Authors thank the financial support from Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) through MAT2016-75586-C4-2/3-P and FIS2017-83295-P and from Generalitat Valenciana under project PROMETEO/2018/123-EFIMAT. ELDS acknowledges the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie for grant agreement No. 785789-COMEX. JAS also acknowledges Ramón y Cajal program for funding support through RYC-2015-17482. AM, SR and ELDS thank interesting discussions with J. Contreras-García who taught them how to analyze the ELF. Finally, authors thank ALBA Light Source for beam allocation at beamline MSPD (Experiment No. 2013110699) and acknowledge computing time provided by MALTA-Cluster and Red Española de Supercomputación (RES) through computer resources at MareNostrum with technical support provided by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (QCM-2018-3-0032). ; Peer reviewed

57th European High Pressure Research Group Meeting on High Pressure Science and Technology (EHPRG2019) in Prague, 1-6 september 2019 ; Metavalent or resonant bonding is a recently proposed new class of bonding that is intermediate between p-type covalent bonding and metallic bonding. It characterizes a new family of materials known as "incipient metals" [1]. Metavalent bonding occurs in materials where there is a deficiency of valence electrons in the unit cell to form a large number of bonds, such as in octahedrally-coordinated rocksalt-related structures occurring in GeTe, SnTe, PbSe, PbTe, Sb2Te3, Bi2Te3, Bi2Se3, Sb, Bi and AgSb2Te4. The main characteristics of metavalent bonding are: i) a much higher cation coordination than that assumed with the 8-N rule; ii) very high Born effective charge and optical dielectric constant as compared to typical covalent materials; iii) high mode Grüneisen parameters of phonons and low wavenumbers of optical phonons as compared to typical covalent materials; and iv) a moderately high electrical conductivity caused by thesmall bandgap which stems from the partial delocalization of electrons between several bonds ; This work has been financially supported by Spanish MINECO under projects FIS2017-83295-P and MAT2016-75586-C4-1/2/3-P and by Generalitat Valenciana under project PROMETEO/2018/123-EFIMAT. Supercomputer time has been provided by the Red Española de Supercomputación (RES) and the MALTA cluster. JAS acknowledges "Ramón y Cajal" fellowship (RYC-2015-17482) and E.L.d.S acknowledges Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant No. 785789-COMEX from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. We also thank ALBA synchrotron for funded experiments.