The Random Phase Approximation and beyond Random Phase Approximation methods based on Adiabatic Connection Fluctuation Dissipation Theorem (ACFD) are tested for structural phase transitions of different groups of materials, including metal to metal, metal to semiconductor, semiconductor to semiconductor transitions. Also the performance assessment of semilocal density functionals with or without empirical long range dispersion corrections has been explored for the same cases. We have investigated the structural phase transitions of three broad group of materials, semi- conductor to metal transitions involving two symmetric structures, semiconductor to metal and wide bandgap semiconductor to semiconductor transitions involving at least one lower symmetric structure and lastly special cases comprising metal to metal transitions and transitions between energetically very close structural phases. The first group contains Si (diamond → β-tin), Ge (diamond → β-tin) and SiC (zinc blende → rocksalt), second group contains GaAs (zinc blende → cmcm) and SiO 2 (quartz → stishovite) and third group contains Pb (fcc → hcp), C(graphite → diamond) and BN (cubic → hexagonal) respectively. We have found that the difference in behavior of exchange and correlation in semilocal functionals and ACFD methods is striking. For the former, the exchange potential and energy often comprise the majority of the binding described by density functional approximations, and the addition of the correlation energy and potential often induce only a (relatively) small shift from the exchange- only results. For the ACFD, however, non self-consistent EXX typically underbinds by a considerable degree resulting in wildly inaccurate results. Thus the addition of correlation leads to very large shifts in the exchange-only results, in direct contrast to semilocal correlation. This difference in behavior is directly linked to the non-local nature of the EXX, and even though the exchange-only starting point is often nowhere close to experiment, the non-local correlation from the ACFD corrects this deficiency and yields the missing binding needed to produce accurate results. Thus we find the ACFD approach to be vital in the validation of semilocal results and recommend its use in materials where experimental results cannot be straightforwardly compared to other approximate electronic structure calculations. Utilizing the second-order approximation to Random Phase Approximation renormalized (RPAr) many-body perturbation theory for the interacting density-density response function, we have used a so-called higher-order terms (HOT) approximation for the correlation energy. In combination with the first-order RPAr correction, the HOT method faithfully captures the infinite- order correlation for a given exchange-correlation kernel, yielding errors of the total correlation energy on the order of 1% or less for most systems. For exchange-like kernels, our new method has the further benefit that the coupling-strength integration can be completely eliminated resulting in a modest reduction in computational cost compared to the traditional approach. When the correlation energy is accurately reproduced by the HOT approximation, structural properties and energy differences are also accurately reproduced, as confirmed by finding interlayer binding energies of several periodic solids and compared that to some molecular systems along with some phase transition parameters of SiC. Energy differences involving fragmentation have proved to be challenging for the HOT method, however, due to errors that do not cancel between a composite system and its constituent pieces which has been verified in our work as well. / Physics

Understanding the “incomprehensible” world of materials is the biggest challenge to the materials science community. To access the properties of the materials and to utilize them for positive changes in the world are of great interest. Often scientists use approximate theories to get legitimate answers to the problems. Density functional theory (DFT) has emerged as one of the successful and powerful predictive methods in this regard. The accuracy of DFT relies on the approximate form of the exchange-correlation (EXC) functional. The most complicated form of this functional can be as accurate as more complicated and computationally robust method like Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC), Random Phase Approximation (RPA). Two newest meta-GGAs, SCAN and SCAN+rVV10 are among those functionals. Instantaneous charge fluctuation between any two objects gives rise to the van der Waals (vdW) interactions (often termed as dispersion interactions). It is a purely correlation effect of the interacting electrons and thus non-local in nature. Despite its small magnitude it plays a very important role in many systems such as weakly bound rare-gas dimers, molecular crystals, and molecule-surface interaction. The traditional semi-local functionals can not describe the non-local of vdW interactions; only short- and intermediate-range of the vdW are accounted for in these functionals. In this thesis we investigate the effect of the weak vdW interactions in surface properties, rare-gas dimers and how it can be captured seamlessly within the semi-local density functional approximation. We have used summed-up vdW series within the spherical-shell approximation to develop a new vdW correction to the meta-GGA-MS2 functional. This method has been utilized to calculate binding energy and equilibrium binding distance of different homo- and hetero- dimers and we found that this method systematically improves the MGGA-MS2 results with a very good agreement with the experimental data. The binding energy curves are plotted using this MGGA-MS2, MGGA-MS2-vdW and two other popular vdW-corrected functionals PBE-D2, vdW-DF2. From these plots it is clear that our summed-up vdW series captures the long-range part of the binding energy curve via C6, C8, and, C10 coefficients. The clean metallic surface properties such as surface energy, work functions are important and often play a crucial role in many catalytic reactions. The weak dispersion interactions present between the surfaces has significant effect on these properties. We used LDA, PBE, PBSEsol, SCAN and SCAN+rVV10 to compute the clean metallic surface properties. The SCAN+rVV10 seamlessly captures different ranges of the vdW interactions at the surface and predicts very accurate values of surface energy (σ), and work function (Φ) and interlayer relaxations (δ%). Our conclusion is adding non-local vdW correction to a good semilocal density functional such as SCAN is necessary in order to predict the weak attractive vdW forces at the metallic surface. The SCAN+rVV10 has also been employed to study the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) on 1T-MoS2. We have chosen as a descriptor differential Gibbs free energy (ΔGH to understand the underlying mechanism of this catalytic reaction. Density functional theory calculations agree with the experimental findings. In the case of layered materials like 1TMoS2, vdW interactions play an important role in hydrogen binding, that SCAN+rVV10 calculation was able to describe precisely. We have also used SCAN and SCAN+rVV10 functionals to understand bonding of CO on (111) metal surfaces, where many approximations to DFT fail to predict correct adsorption site and adsorption energy. In this case SCAN and SCAN+rVV10 do not show systematic improvements compared to LDA or PBE, rather, both SCAN and SCAN+rVV10 overbind CO more compared to PBE but less compared to the LDA. This overbinding of CO is associated with the incorrect charge transfer from metal to molecule and presumably comes from the density-driven self-interaction error of the functionals. In this thesis we assessed different semi-local functionals to inivestigate molecule surface systems of π-conjugated molecules (thiophene, pyridine) adsorbed on Cu(111), Cu(110), Cu(100) surfaces. We find the binding mechanism of these molecules on the metallic surface is mediated by short and intermediate range vdW interactions. Calculated values of binding energies and adsorbed geometries imply that this kind of adsorption falls in the weak chemisorption regime. Structural phase transitions due to applied pressure are very important in materials science. However, pressure induced structural phase transition in early lanthanide elements such as Ce are considered as abnormal first order phase transition. The Ce α-to-γ isostructural phase transition is one of them. The volume collapse and change of magnetic properties associated with this transition are mediated by the localized f -electron. Semi-local density functionals like LDA, GGA delocalize this f -electron due to the inherent self-interaction error (SIE) of these functionals. We have tested the SCAN functional for this particular problem, and, it was found that the spin-orbit coupling calculations with SCAN not only predicts the correct magnetic ordering of the two phases, but also gives a correct minima for the high-pressure α-Ce phase and a shoulder for the low-pressure γ-Ce phase. / Physics

This thesis focuses on the role of interfacial strain in heterostructures to modify the magnetism of thin ferromagnetic films due to the inverse magnetostrictive effect, defined as the change of magnetization produced in ferromagnetic materials by an external stress. Thus, the magnetic control can be obtained without applying an external field by using heterostructures composed of a non-magnetic layer characterized by a temperature-driven structural phase transition coupled to a ferromagnetic layer. In such heterostructures, the magnetization of the ferromagnetic layer is modified through changes in the stress field at the interface when the structural phase transition in the non-magnetic layer (actuator) is carried out. In this work, we used NiTi shape memory alloy as the actuator to modify the magnetic behavior of ferromagnetic films through the magneto-elastic coupling in novel NiTi/Ni and NiTi/Co heterostructures. NiTi, when near its equiatomic composition, is a shape memory alloy that undergoes a reversible structural phase transition with temperature, providing stress on the ferromagnetic film. We chose this alloy because NiTi exhibits a large recovery stress with transition temperatures above room temperature for Ti-rich NiTi films, which is of interest for technological applications of the heterostructures. Since the right microstructure of NiTi is important to observe structural phase transition and it defines the characteristic of the transition, an extensive review on previous research on NiTi is detailed in this thesis. Thus, to ensure large stress during the NiTi structural transition with temperature, the NiTi alloy must be near its equiatomic composition with a thickness above 800 nm. Both characteristics were confirmed by Rutherford Backscattering analyses. The crystal structure and its transition with temperature were studied by X-ray diffraction measurements. In-plane magnetization and hysteresis measurements with temperature, performed on a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer, prove the magneto-elastic coupling that was observed as an enhancement in the magnetic moment of the ferromagnetic layer. Such enhancement becomes the feature of magneto-elastic coupling in these novel NiTi/ferromagnetic heterostructures. / Esta tese estuda o papel da tensão interfacial em filmes heterogêneos na modificação do magnetismo de camadas ferromagnéticas finas por meio do efeito magnetoestritivo inverso, definido como a mudança de magnetização produzida em materiais ferromagnéticos por um estresse externo. Tecnologicamente, isto visa ter um grau de controle magnético do material sem a aplicação de um campo externo, usando heteroestruturas compostas por uma camada não magnética caracterizada por uma transição de fase estrutural acionada pela temperatura, acoplada a uma camada ferromagnética. Em tais heteroestruturas, a magnetização da camada ferromagnética é modificada através de alterações no campo de tensão na interface quando a transição de fase estrutural na camada não magnética (atuador) é realizada. Assim, utilizamos a liga com memória de forma NiTi como atuador, para modificar o comportamento magnético de filmes ferromagnéticos através do acoplamento magnetoelástico em novas heteroestruturas de NiTi/Ni e NiTi/Co. O NiTi, quando próximo à sua composição equiatômica, é uma liga com memória de forma que sofre uma transição de fase estrutural reversível com a temperatura, proporcionando tensão no filme ferromagnético. Escolhemos esta liga porque o NiTi apresenta uma grande tensão de recuperação com temperaturas de transição acima da temperatura ambiente, para filmes de NiTi ricos em Ti, o que é de interesse para aplicações tecnológicas das heteroestruturas. A microestrutura do NiTi é fundamental para favorecer a transição de fase estrutural e definir as suas características. Assim, uma extensa revisão de pesquisas anteriores sobre NiTi é detalhada nesta tese. Para garantir um grande estresse durante a transição estrutural do NiTi com a temperatura, o filme de NiTi deve estar próximo de sua composição equiatômica e ter espessura acima de 800 nm. Ambas as características foram confirmadas pelas análises de espectroscopia de retroespalhamento Rutherford. A estrutura cristalina e sua transição com a temperatura foram estudadas por medidas de difração de raios X. Medidas de magnetização e histerese em função da temperatura, com campo aplicado no plano dos filmes, realizadas em um magnetômetro SQUID, comprovaram a existência do acoplamento magnetoelástico, o qual se manifestou através de variações no momento magnético da camada ferromagnética. Essas mudanças de magnetização, observadas principalmente na heteroestrutura com Ni, torna-se a característica principal do acoplamento magnetoelástico nesses novos materiais.

This thesis focuses on the role of interfacial strain in heterostructures to modify the magnetism of thin ferromagnetic films due to the inverse magnetostrictive effect, defined as the change of magnetization produced in ferromagnetic materials by an external stress. Thus, the magnetic control can be obtained without applying an external field by using heterostructures composed of a non-magnetic layer characterized by a temperature-driven structural phase transition coupled to a ferromagnetic layer. In such heterostructures, the magnetization of the ferromagnetic layer is modified through changes in the stress field at the interface when the structural phase transition in the non-magnetic layer (actuator) is carried out. In this work, we used NiTi shape memory alloy as the actuator to modify the magnetic behavior of ferromagnetic films through the magneto-elastic coupling in novel NiTi/Ni and NiTi/Co heterostructures. NiTi, when near its equiatomic composition, is a shape memory alloy that undergoes a reversible structural phase transition with temperature, providing stress on the ferromagnetic film. We chose this alloy because NiTi exhibits a large recovery stress with transition temperatures above room temperature for Ti-rich NiTi films, which is of interest for technological applications of the heterostructures. Since the right microstructure of NiTi is important to observe structural phase transition and it defines the characteristic of the transition, an extensive review on previous research on NiTi is detailed in this thesis. Thus, to ensure large stress during the NiTi structural transition with temperature, the NiTi alloy must be near its equiatomic composition with a thickness above 800 nm. Both characteristics were confirmed by Rutherford Backscattering analyses. The crystal structure and its transition with temperature were studied by X-ray diffraction measurements. In-plane magnetization and hysteresis measurements with temperature, performed on a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer, prove the magneto-elastic coupling that was observed as an enhancement in the magnetic moment of the ferromagnetic layer. Such enhancement becomes the feature of magneto-elastic coupling in these novel NiTi/ferromagnetic heterostructures. / Esta tese estuda o papel da tensão interfacial em filmes heterogêneos na modificação do magnetismo de camadas ferromagnéticas finas por meio do efeito magnetoestritivo inverso, definido como a mudança de magnetização produzida em materiais ferromagnéticos por um estresse externo. Tecnologicamente, isto visa ter um grau de controle magnético do material sem a aplicação de um campo externo, usando heteroestruturas compostas por uma camada não magnética caracterizada por uma transição de fase estrutural acionada pela temperatura, acoplada a uma camada ferromagnética. Em tais heteroestruturas, a magnetização da camada ferromagnética é modificada através de alterações no campo de tensão na interface quando a transição de fase estrutural na camada não magnética (atuador) é realizada. Assim, utilizamos a liga com memória de forma NiTi como atuador, para modificar o comportamento magnético de filmes ferromagnéticos através do acoplamento magnetoelástico em novas heteroestruturas de NiTi/Ni e NiTi/Co. O NiTi, quando próximo à sua composição equiatômica, é uma liga com memória de forma que sofre uma transição de fase estrutural reversível com a temperatura, proporcionando tensão no filme ferromagnético. Escolhemos esta liga porque o NiTi apresenta uma grande tensão de recuperação com temperaturas de transição acima da temperatura ambiente, para filmes de NiTi ricos em Ti, o que é de interesse para aplicações tecnológicas das heteroestruturas. A microestrutura do NiTi é fundamental para favorecer a transição de fase estrutural e definir as suas características. Assim, uma extensa revisão de pesquisas anteriores sobre NiTi é detalhada nesta tese. Para garantir um grande estresse durante a transição estrutural do NiTi com a temperatura, o filme de NiTi deve estar próximo de sua composição equiatômica e ter espessura acima de 800 nm. Ambas as características foram confirmadas pelas análises de espectroscopia de retroespalhamento Rutherford. A estrutura cristalina e sua transição com a temperatura foram estudadas por medidas de difração de raios X. Medidas de magnetização e histerese em função da temperatura, com campo aplicado no plano dos filmes, realizadas em um magnetômetro SQUID, comprovaram a existência do acoplamento magnetoelástico, o qual se manifestou através de variações no momento magnético da camada ferromagnética. Essas mudanças de magnetização, observadas principalmente na heteroestrutura com Ni, torna-se a característica principal do acoplamento magnetoelástico nesses novos materiais.