Published August 3, 2021 | Version 0.0.0

Calculated O K-edge XAS Spectra of Niobium Oxide Phases using Bethe-Salpeter equation

  • 1. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 2. National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • 3. King's College London

Description

X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) were calculated for the oxygen K-edge for 20 different phases of Niobium oxides (NbOx) using the Bethe-Salpeter equation as implemented within the OCEAN code. Fifteen of the NbOx phases are amorphous, in which nine are stoichiometric Nb2O5, and slightly off-stoichiometric containing a variety of different defects. The other five structures are different crystalline phases (with spacegroup): NbO (Pm3m), NbO2 (P42/mnm), N-Nb2O5 (C2/m), M-Nb2O5 (I4/mmm), and B-Nb2O5 (C2/c). The data is given in terms of four different folders: (1) VASP POSCARs for amorphous structures (called amorph_POSCARs), (2) VASP POSCARs for crystalline structures (called crystalline_nboxide_structures), (3) OCEAN outputs for amorphous structures (called amorph_U4), and (4) OCEAN outputs for crystalline structures (called cryst_U4). The 'amorph_U4' folder contains subfolders for each structure, and within each subfolder is a 'Results' folder containing the OCEAN input and output files, including individual XAS spectra for each individual oxygen atom in the structure. The organization of the 'cryst_U4' folder structure is the same as the 'amorph_U4' folder.

To calculate the XAS spectra within the OCEAN code, we first performed DFT (using Quantum Espresso) with an energy cut-off of 92 Ryd., and a simplified Hubbard U of 4 eV was applied to the Nb d orbitals. The `O-high' and `Nb-sp' pseudopotentials from PseudoDojo were used. For the BSE, the electron orbitals were down-sampled onto real space grids chosen to match 1 grid point per 1 a.u., the k-point meshes were chosen to exceed 1 grid point per 0.16 a.u.-1, and the number of conduction bands was set to 0.126 times the unit cell volume (in a.u.3). 
For the screening, electron orbitals were calculated on k-point meshes exceeding 1 grid point per 0.56 a.u.-1, and the number of conduction bands was set to 0.437 times the unit cell volume (in a.u.3).
A Lorentzian core-hole broadening of 0.07 eV was included, and additional Gaussian broadening of 0.5 eV was applied.

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amorph_POSCARs.zip

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Additional details

Related works

Is supplement to
10.5281/zenodo.5139270 (DOI)