Electronic, optical, and mechanical properties of superhard cold-compressed phases of carbon

Author(s)
Haiyang Niu, Pengyue Wei, Yan Sun, Xing-Qiu Chen, Cesare Franchini, D. Z. Li, Yiyi Li
Abstract

By means of standard and hybrid density functional theory, we analyzed the electronic, optical, and mechanical properties of the two discovered superhard orthorhombic (W) and monoclinic (M) phases of carbon, synthesized by cold compression. We demonstrated that both phases exhibit a transparent insulating behaviour with indirect band gaps of about 5.4 eV (W) and 4.5 eV (M), and highly isotropic optical spectra, substantially different to those of the related body centered tetragonal C(4) phase. The analysis of the elastic constants and Vickers hardness confirmed that these phases are as hard as the second hardest material c-BC(2)N

Organisation(s)
Computational Materials Physics
External organisation(s)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
Journal
Applied Physics Letters
Volume
99
No. of pages
3
ISSN
0003-6951
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3610996
Publication date
2011
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103018 Materials physics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/3fe1862c-4914-46d4-8209-41cba1346f2f