Related papers: Dynamic microscopic structures and dielectric resp…
The current controversies about the existence of an intermediate 'beta' phase of BiFeO_3 and the high temperature paraelectric 'gamma' phase are resolved by studying the sequence of ferroic transitions in 0.8BiFeO_3-0.2Pb(Fe_1/2Nb_1/2)O_3…
The investigation of the structural phase transition in the vicinity of the Curie temperature $T_c$ of LiNb$_{1-x}$Ta$_x$O$_3$ crystals is motivated by the expected combination of advantageous high-temperature properties of LiNbO$_3$ and…
Modeling ferroelectric materials from first principles is one of the successes of density-functional theory, and the driver of much development effort, requiring an accurate description of the electronic processes and the thermodynamic…
Motivated by the experimental synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) perovskite materials, we study the stability of 2D SrTiO$_3$ from first principles. We find that the TiO$_6$ octahedral rotations emerge in 2D SrTiO$_3$ with a rotation angle…
We develop a first-principles scheme to study ferroelectric phase transitions for perovskite compounds. We obtain an effective Hamiltonian which is fully specified by first-principles ultra-soft pseudopotential calculations. This approach…
PbTiO3 has the highest tetragonal distortion (c/a=1.064) and highest spontaneous polarization among perovskite titanates. But, it is hazardous and hence one needs to reduce Pb content by substituting or reducing Pb content for use in…
We undertake a detailed high-resolution diffraction study of a novel plain band insulator, La$_2$MgO$_4$, which may be viewed as a structural surrogate system of the undoped end-member of the high-T$_c$ superconductors,…
Here we report a structural phase transition and its possible competition with superconductivity in the suboxide La$_5$Pb$_3$O. Upon cooling through $T_t$ = 225 K, La$_5$Pb$_3$O transforms from a high-temperature I4/mcm to a low-temperature…
Structural phase transitions and soft phonon modes pose a longstanding challenge to computing electron-phonon (e-ph) interactions in strongly anharmonic crystals. Here we develop a first-principles approach to compute e-ph scattering and…
Possible variations in the dynamical behaviour of LiYF$_{4}$ due to its structural changes following several pressure-induced phase transitions are examined by making use of the complementary techniques of quasi-harmonic lattice dynamics…
We have investigated the electronic, vibrational, optical, thermal and piezoelectric properties of LiNbO$_3$, LiTaO$_3$ and Li$_2$NbTaO$_6$ using the first-principles calculation based on the density functional theory. It also shows…
Piezoelectric and ferroelectric ceramics with a high Curie temperature (Tc) have attracted a growing attention owning to their applications under severe environments. In this work, phase structure, dielectric, ferroelectric and…
Understanding collective phenomena in quantum materials from first principles is a promising route toward engineering materials properties on demand and designing new functionalities. This work examines the quantum paraelectric state, an…
Barium titanate (BaTiO$_3$) is a prototypical ferroelectric perovskite that undergoes the rhombohedral-orthorhombic-tetragonal-cubic phase transitions as the temperature increases. In this work, we develop a classical interatomic potential…
We investigate the order of the topological quantum phase transition in a two dimensional quadrupolar topological insulator within a thermodynamic approach. Using numerical methods, we separate the bulk, edge and corner contributions to the…
Shape memory alloys (SMAs) exhibit hysteresis behaviors upon stress and temperature induced loadings. In this contribution, we focus on numerical simulations of microstructure evolution of cubic-to-tetragonal martensitic phase…
Highly-strained BiFeO3 exhibits a "tetragonal-like, monoclinic" crystal structure found only in epitaxial films (with an out-of-plane lattice parameter exceeding the in-plane value by >20%). Previous work has shown that this phase is…
The hybrid halide perovskite CH3NH3PbI3 exhibits a complex structural behaviour, with successive transitions between orthorhombic, tetragonal and cubic polymorphs at ca. 165 K and 327 K. Herein we report first-principles lattice dynamics…
A detailed temperature and pressure investigation on BiGdO$_{3}$ is carried out by means of dielectric constant, piezoelectric current, polarization-electric field loop, Raman scattering and x-ray diffraction measurements. Temperature…
Structural stability of paramagnetic (PM) body-centered cubic (bcc) Fe under pressure is investigated based on first-principles phonon calculations. Spin configurations of the PM phase are approximated using a binary special quasi-random…