Ab initio investigation of the effect of pressure on the structure and electronic properties of alkali metal oxides and peroxides

Abstract

Within the framework of a gradient approximation of the all-electron density functional theory (DFT), using a linear combination of atomic orbitals of the CRYSTAL09 software package, the structural and electronic properties of lithium, sodium, and potassium oxides and peroxides are investigated under hydrostatic conditions in the range of pressures from −3 to 15 GPa. The crystal structure parameters are determined, the band structure, densities of state (DOSs), atomic charges, and overlap populations are calculated, and their dependence on pressure is established. The energy band gap is shown to increase with pressure.