English

Structures and finite-temperature abundances of defects in In$_2$O$_3$-II from first-principles calculations

Materials Science 2016-09-16 v1

Abstract

We have studied intrinsic defect complexes in In2_2O3_3 using ab initio random structure searching (AIRSS). Our first-principles density-functional-theory calculations predict the thermodynamic stability of several novel defect structures. We combine the static lattice energy and harmonic vibrational energy with the often-neglected configurational entropy to construct the free energy, which is minimised to predict defect abundances at finite temperatures. We predict that some of our new defect structures - in particular our {In,2VO_\mathrm{O}} and {2In,3VO_\mathrm{O}} defects - can exist in significant abundances at finite temperatures, and their densities of electronic states indicate that they could play an important role in the unexpectedly high density of n-type charge carriers observed in In2_2O3_3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.04760,
  title  = {Structures and finite-temperature abundances of defects in In$_2$O$_3$-II from first-principles calculations},
  author = {Jamie M. Wynn and Richard J. Needs and Andrew J. Morris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.04760},
  year   = {2016}
}