Institute of Solid State Physics


SS22WS22SS23WS23SS24WS24      Guidelines for Master Students

A first-principles approach to the electronic structure of rare-earth semiconductors
Anna Galler
Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics
https://tugraz.webex.com/tugraz/j.php?MTID=m2790c3d2a9a49c31369978e2a76de31c
11:15 - 12:15 Wednesday 17 April 2024 

Rare-earth semiconductors such as the rare-earth mononitrides LnN (with Ln=rare-earth) and fluorosulfides LnSF are technologically promising materials for optics and spintronics applications. Their electronic structure is challenging for theory, since wide conduction and valence bands coexist with Mott localized rare-earth 4f states. In this talk, I will present a computational method combining a dynamical mean-field theory approach to the localized 4f shells with an improved description of band gaps by a semilocal exchange-correlation potential. I employ this method to investigate several rare-earth semiconductors and show that we can reliably predict their electronic structure and optical response.

[1] Galler and Pourovskii, New J. Phys. 24, 043039 (2022)
[2] Galler, Boust, Demourgues, Biermann and Pourovskii, PRB 103, L241105 (2021)