Naimat Ullah Khana,
Javed Iqbalb,
Abdullah*c,
Ali Algahtanide,
Jehan Y. Al-Humaidif,
Vineet Tirth
de,
Kashif Safeeng,
Amnah Mohammed Alsuhaibanih,
Tawfiq Al-Mughanami,
Moamen S. Refatj and
Abid Zaman
*k
aDepartment of Physics, University of Science and Technology, Bannu, 28100, Pakistan
bDepartment of Physics, Gomal University, DI Khan, KP 29220, Pakistan
cDepartment of Physics, Government Post Graduate College, Karak, 27200, Pakistan. E-mail: ktkshoraim@gmail.com
dMechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Asir, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
eResearch Center for Advanced Materials Science (RCAMS), King Khalid University, Guraiger, P.O. Box 9004, Abha-61413, Asir, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
fDepartment of Chemistry, College of Science, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, P.O. BOX 84428, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia
gDepartment of Physics, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, 23200, Pakistan
hDepartment of Physical Sport Science, College of Education, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, P.O. Box 84428, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia
iDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, King Faisal University, P.O. Box 380, Al-Ahsa 31982, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
jDepartment of Chemistry, College of Science, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia
kDepartment of Physics, Riphah International University, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan. E-mail: zaman.abid87@gmail.com
First published on 28th July 2023
The non-toxic nature of lead-free materials with cubic perovskite structure has attracted the researcher's attention, and huge work is ongoing for the search of such materials. Furthermore, due to demand for their utilization in diverse applications, such as photovoltaic and optoelectronics, these inorganic-halide materials have become more enchanting for engineers. In the present work, all the key properties, including structural, electronic, optical, and mechanical, of rubidium based RbVX3 (where X is chlorine, bromine, and iodine) materials were extensively studied via first-principle density functional theory (DFT). The study reveals the half-metallic nature of the currently studied materials. For the mechanical stability of RbVX3 compounds, all three independent elastic coefficients (Cij) were determined, from which it was concluded that these materials are mechanically stable. Moreover, from the Poison and Pugh's ratios, it was found that the RbVCl3 and RbVBr3 materials have ductile nature, while RbVI3 has brittle nature upon the applied stress.
These ABX3 materials for various types of devices display various combinations of properties depending on the treatment process by the material scientists in the laboratory during their synthesis. There are some ABX3 materials exhibiting perovskite structures but their unique nature of behaving like semiconductors in one spin while metallic in the opposite spin makes them ideal for applications such as piezo-electricity, superconductors at high temperature, colossal magneto-resistivity, photo-luminescence, vehicle energy devices, lenses applications, and photovoltaics.9–17 In 2002, a research group also investigated computationally such types of materials having dual nature in their spins. The authors reported that both the MTiF3 (where M stands for Rb and Cs) materials have metallic nature in their spin-up, while in the spin-down configuration, they showed semiconducting behavior. The authors claimed that both the aforesaid materials are elastically stable and have attractive optical properties.18 A lot of other materials have been studied by different research groups using DFT calculations in order to help experimentalists with producing cost effective, easy, and more suitable materials than the existing materials for practical applications.19,20
Our research study was also focused on the above-discussed aim, and for that purpose, the structural, electronic, optical, and mechanical properties of the new RbVX3 materials have been studied in detail via the DFT approach.
The following well known formula of the Goldsmith's tolerance factor was followed to find the RbVX3 materials structure and thermodynamic endurance (Fig. 2).24
![]() | (1) |
In the above equation, rA, rB, and rX show the ionic radii of Rb, V, and nonmetal atoms Br/Cl/I, respectively. The calculated t values are listed in Table 1 for the RbVX3 materials and found in the range of 0.94–0.98, which are needed for the stable perovskite materials, as suggested by Goldsmith.
Structural parameters | RbVCl3 | RbVBr3 | RbVI3 |
---|---|---|---|
Lattice constant (ao) (Å) | 4.917 | 5.2224 | 5.653 |
Bulk modulus (B0) (GPa) | 42.01 | 34.11 | 25.47 |
Volume at ground state (V0) (a.u.)3 | 802.351 | 961.1767 | 1219.447 |
Bulk modulus derivative (B′) | 5.0 | 5.00 | 5.000 |
Ground state energy (Ry) | −10![]() |
−23![]() |
−50![]() |
Tolerance factor | 0.98 | 0.97 | 0.94 |
Formation energy (eV per atom) | −1.8 | −1.5 | −1.6 |
From Table 1, it is clear that the optimized cell volumes and lattice constants of the RbVX3 materials calculated from the energy-volume optimization curves show variation by replacing the halogen atoms at the X position. Moreover, the unit cell volume and lattice parameters move towards higher values with the replacement of the halogen atom having smaller ionic radii by another halogen atom having relatively larger ionic radii. Among the studied RbVX3 materials, the RbVCl3 material possesses the smallest lattice constant of 4.917 Å because of the smaller ionic radii of chlorine. However, the lattice constant of the unit cell was recorded as 5.2224 Å for the RbVBr3 materials, which is due to the higher ionic radii of Br than Cl. The placement of iodine at position X surges the lattice constant to 5.653 Å, which is due to the higher ionic radii of iodine than chlorine and bromine.25 Moreover, the unit cell volumes of the RbVX3 materials also showed the same trend of variation as that of the lattice constant with the replacement of the halogen atom at position X. The formation energy of compounds determines the formation and thermodynamic stability of the compounds. The RbVCl3 material was found to be more stable due to having the lowest formation energy. The calculated values of formation energy for all the investigated materials are listed in Table 1. The negative values of these compounds show that they are thermodynamically stable and can be synthesized in the laboratory.
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Fig. 4 The electronic band structures with the predicted TDOS and PDOS for (a) and (b) RbVBr3, (c) and (d) RbVCl3 and (e) and (f) RbVI3 compounds. |
![]() | (2) |
![]() | (3) |
![]() | (4) |
![]() | (5) |
![]() | (6) |
![]() | (7) |
Compounds | C11 | C12 | C44 | B | A | G | E | V | B/G |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
RbVCl3 | 49.85 | 37.81 | 17.43 | 41.8 | 2.8 | 1.4 | 4.3 | 0.71 | 29.8 |
RbVBr3 | 63.18 | 19.46 | 25.27 | 34.03 | 1.15 | 0.6 | 0.1 | 0.74 | 56.72 |
RbVI3 | 13.37 | 32.44 | 22.016 | 26 | −2.3 | 38.7 | 77.7 | 0.004 | 0.67 |
The bulk modulus values calculated for all the three RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I) compounds were in the range of 26 to 42 GPa, which confirms the soften and non-rigid nature of all the studied materials. Moreover, it is clear from the table that the bulk modulus value of the material having a non-metallic atom with smaller ionic radii at the X position is greater than the other materials having a larger ionic radii non-metallic atom at the X position; the value of bulk modulus moves towards smaller value as the chlorine is replaced by another X atom having comparatively larger ionic radii. Finally, on the basis of the bulk modulus, these materials are best to be utilized in bendable devices because of their softness and flexible nature. Furthermore, the anisotropy factor (A) for investigated compounds was calculated and is listed in Table 2. For none of the materials, the anisotropy factor value was seen to be one, which is needed for any material to have isotropic nature, and this validates the anisotropic nature of all the three studied RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I) materials. The shear modulus G values were calculated and found to be the lowest at 0.6 for the RbVBr3 material while highest for the RbVI3 material. Thus, the RbVI3 is more resistive to transverse deformation than the RbVCl3 & RbVBr3.
Among the three studied materials, RbVCl3 and RbVBr3 have a greater value of Poisson ratio than 0.33 and confirms their ductile nature, while the RbVI3 was found to have brittle nature rather than ductile because it has a Poisson ratio value of 0.004.32 The ratio of B/G as suggested by Pugh's was also calculated and is represented in Table 2. The calculated B/G ratio values of RbVCl3 and RbVBr3 are found to be greater than 1.75, while the RbVI3 had a lower value of 0.67. So, the Pugh's ratio values of the studied materials also confirm the brittle nature of RbVI3 material and ductile nature of the remaining two (RbVCl3 and RbVBr3) materials.33
ε(ω) = ε1(ω) + j(ε2(ω)) | (8) |
The ε1(ω) parts of the dielectric functions for the recently investigated RbVX3 materials in the energy range of 0–40 eV of photons are plotted in Fig. 5(a), and this part explains the polarizability of any material. The static values of the real parts of the RbVX3 materials were found as 73 for RbVI3, 24 for RbVBr3, and 17 for RbVCl3, and these curves showed a sudden decline in their values with a very little increment in the photon energy. However, for the further increment in the photon energy than 1.5 eV, the ε1(ω) curves of all the materials showed nearly the same manner of variation, and finally, the RbVI3 first achieved the negative value at about 8 eV, which confirms that this material reflects all the incident photons of having energies in this range and behaved like metal.34 For the energies of photons greater than 20 eV, all the investigated materials showed no countable variation. The optical band gap and absorption information of any material can be gathered from the imaginary part of the dielectric function. The static value of RbVI3 was found to be much higher than the other two studied materials; however, the RbVCl3 and RbVBr3 had almost similar static values, as shown in Fig. 5(b). All three materials showed a fluctuating manner of increasing and decreasing values in the energy range of 2–22 eV, which indicates the good absorption behavior of these materials in this range. However, for a higher range of photon energy, all three materials showed small peaks of ε2(ω), which means that these materials have less absorption ability in the higher energies of incident photons.
The refractive index patterns against the energy values of photons in the range of 0–40 eV of the studied RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I) materials are presented in Fig. 6(a). The phenomena of dispersion of the photons that are incident on any material can be described by the respective refractive index of that material. The variation in the refractive index curves with varied photon energies was exactly in the same manner as that of the real parts of the dielectric functions of these materials with the photon energies. Moreover, the static values of the refractive index and that of the real parts of the investigated materials fulfilled their well-known relation of ε1(0) = n2(0).35 From the figure, it is clear that the n(ω) showed greater variation in its values for the photons having energies in the range of 2–25 eV but almost negligible variation for the photons having energies greater than 25 eV.
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Fig. 6 The optical parameters of (a) refractive index (b) absorption coefficient (c) optical conductivity, and (d) reflectivity for RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I). |
Fig. 6(b) and (c) represents the absorption coefficient and the optical conductivity of the presently investigated RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I) materials in the energy range of 0–40 eV. It is clear from the figure that the curves of both the optical conductivity and absorption coefficient had the same way of improvement and decline in their values with the photon energy variation. For lower values of photon energy, the absorption curves showed small peaks, and as a result, the optical conductivity values were also smaller at these lower ranges of photon energy. However, as the photon energy crosses the limit of 5 eV, the absorption ability of all the materials is enhanced, and as a result, the optical conductivity of the materials is also increased. It was concluded from the patterns of absorption coefficient that the investigated materials had excellent ability of absorption of the incident photons in the energy range of 16–20 eV, and as a result, all the materials showed excess of photo-electrons in these UV energy ranges of incident photons. Moreover, the RbVCl3 material showed good ability of the incident photon absorption as well as the emission of photo-electrons in the studied energy range of photons. From the peaks of the absorption coefficient and optical conductivity of the investigated RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I) materials, it can be concluded that the non-metal having smaller ionic radii at the X position can cause a greater value of absorption coefficient and optical conductivity than the non-metal having greater ionic radii for the same range of incident photons. The highest values of optical conductivity were noted as 7000 unit, 6500 unit, and 5800 unit for the RbVCl3, RbVBr3, and RbVI3, respectively, for the incident UV photon energy range of 5–20 eV. All three materials showed a decline in their values of absorption coefficient and optical conductivity for higher values of incident photon energy, which makes these materials as a reflector for these range of incident photons. The greater values of the optical conductivities and large energy range of absorption of the studied halide materials make them suitable for their use in numerous practical opto-electronic devices.
For the presently investigated RbVX3 (X = Br, Cl, I) materials, the reflectivity phenomena against the incident photon energy were also determined in order to know about the surface characteristics of the materials. From Fig. 6(d), it is clear that the peaks of reflectivity show a resemblance with the optical conductivity of the investigated materials; however, the peaks of reflectivity of the investigated materials were not that much sharp like that of the observed peaks of optical conductivity. Since the reflectivity is usually caused by the free electrons at the surface of the materials and increase in the optical conductivity means the generation of excess photo-electrons in the materials, which causes an enhancement in reflectivity from the surface of the materials.
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