Advanced capabilities for materials modelling with Quantum ESPRESSO.

Quantum EXPRESSO is an integrated suite of open-source computer codes for quantum simulations of materials using state-of-the-art electronic-structure techniques, based on density-functional theory, density-functional perturbation theory, and many-body perturbation theory, within the plane-wave pseudopotential and projector-augmented-wave approaches. Quantum EXPRESSO owes its popularity to the wide variety of properties and processes it allows to simulate, to its performance on an increasingly broad array of hardware architectures, and to a community of researchers that rely on its capabilities as a core open-source development platform to implement their ideas. In this paper we describe recent extensions and improvements, covering new methodologies and property calculators, improved parallelization, code modularization, and extended interoperability both within the distribution and with external software.

Low electron-polar optical phonon scattering as a fundamental aspect of carrier mobility in methylammonium lead halide CH3NH3PbI3 perovskites.

High carrier mobility is often invoked to justify the exceptionally long diffusion length in CH3NH3PbI3 perovskites. Using a combination of an ab initio band structure and scattering models, we present clear evidence that large electrical and Hall mobilities are crucially related to the low scattering rate of carriers with polar optical phonons, which represents the dominant mobility-limiting mechanism at room temperature. With a charge-injection regime at room temperature, we obtained carrier relaxation times (τrel) of ∼10 fs, which are typical of polar inorganic semiconductors, and electrical mobilities (µ) as high as ∼60 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) and 40 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) for electrons and holes, respectively, which were robustly independent on the injected carrier density in the range of n ∼ 10(14) cm(-3) to 10(20) cm(-3). In the absence of a significant concentration of trapping centers, these mobilities foster diffusion lengths of ∼10 µm for the low injection density regime (n ∼ 10(15) cm(-3)), which are in agreement with recent measurements for highly pure single-crystal perovskites.

Thermally Activated Point Defect Diffusion in Methylammonium Lead Trihalide: Anisotropic and Ultrahigh Mobility of Iodine.

We study the diffusion of point defects in crystalline methylammonium lead halide (MAPI) at finite temperatures by using all-atoms molecular dynamics. We find that, for what concerns intrinsic defects, iodine diffusion is by far the dominant mechanism of ionic transport in MAPI, with diffusivities as high as 7.4 × 10(-7) and 4.3 × 10(-6) cm(2) s(-1) at 300 K and single activation energies of 0.24 and 0.10 eV, for interstitials and vacancies, respectively. The comparison with common covalent and oxide crystals reveals the ultrahigh mobility of defects in MAPI. Though at room temperature the vacancies are about 1 order of magnitude more diffusive, the anisotropic interstitial dynamics increases more rapidly with temperature, and it can be dominant at high temperatures. Present results are fully consistent with the involvement of iodide ions in hysteresis and have implications for improvement of the material quality by better control of defect diffusion.

Temperature Evolution of Methylammonium Trihalide Vibrations at the Atomic Scale.

The temperature evolution of vibrations of CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPI) is studied by combining first principles and classical molecular dynamics and compared to available experimental data. The work has a fundamental character showing that it is possible to reproduce the key features of the vibrational spectrum by the simple physical quantities included in the classical model, namely the ionic-dispersive hybrid interactions and the mass difference between organic and inorganic components. The dynamics reveals a sizable temperature evolution of the MAPI spectrum along with the orthorhombic-to-tetragonal-to-cubic transformation and a strong dependence on molecular confinement and order. The thermally induced weakening of the H-I interactions and the anharmonic mixing of modes give two vibrational peaks at 200-250 cm(-1) that are not present at zero temperature and are expected to have detectable infrared activity. The infrared inactive vibrational peak at ∼140 cm(-1) due to molecular spinning disappears abruptly at the orthorhombic-to-tetragonal transition and forms a broad molecular band red-shifting progressively with temperature. This trend is correlated to the reduced confinement of the rotating cations due to thermal expansion of the lattice.