Browsing by Author "Bilc, D. I."

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Open Access
Ab initio study of hydrogenic effective mass impurities in Si nanowires
(Institute of Physics Publishing, 2017-01) Peelaers, H.; Durgun, Engin; Partoens, B.; Bilc, D. I.; Ghosez, P.; Van De Walle C. G.; Peeters, F. M.
The effect of B and P dopants on the band structure of Si nanowires is studied using electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory. At low concentrations a dispersionless band is formed, clearly distinguishable from the valence and conduction bands. Although this band is evidently induced by the dopant impurity, it turns out to have purely Si character. These results can be rigorously analyzed in the framework of effective mass theory. In the process we resolve some common misconceptions about the physics of hydrogenic shallow impurities, which can be more clearly elucidated in the case of nanowires than would be possible for bulk Si. We also show the importance of correctly describing the effect of dielectric confinement, which is not included in traditional electronic structure calculations, by comparing the obtained results with those of G0W0 calculations.
Open Access
Hydrogen-saturated silicon nanowires heavily doped with interstitals and substitutional transition metals
(American Chemical Society, 2012) Durgun, Engin; Bilc, D. I.; Çıracı, Salim; Ghosez, P.
We report a first-principles systematic study of atomic, electronic, and magnetic properties of hydrogen-saturated silicon nanowires (H-SiNW) that are heavily doped by transition metal (TM) atoms placed at various interstitial and substitutional sites. Our results obtained within the conventional GGA+U approach have been confirmed using a hybrid functional. To reveal the surface effects, we examined three different possible facets of H-SiNW along the [001] direction with a diameter of similar to 2 nm. The energetics of doping and resulting electronic and magnetic properties are examined for all alternative configurations. We found that except Ti, the resulting systems have a magnetic ground state with a varying magnetic moment. Whereas H-SiNWs are initially nonmagnetic semiconductor, they generally become ferromagnetic metal upon TM doping. They can even exhibit half-metallic behavior for specific cases. Our results suggest that H-SiNWs functionalized by TM impurities form a new type of dilute magnetic semiconductor potentially attractive for new electronic and spintronic devices on the nanoscale.