Effect of Pressure on the Electronic, Magnetic, and Optical Properties of the In0.75Cr0.25P Compound

Abstract

Using the density functional theory (DFT) approach and full-potential linearized augmented plane waves (FP-LAPW) method, some of the electronic (density of states, band structure, and Fermi surfaces), magnetic (total and local magnetic moments, spin polarization, exchange constants), and optical properties (dielectric function, energy loss function, and refractive index) were investigated. The GGA + U approximation was used for the exchange-correlation term. The effect of hydrostatic pressure up to 20 GP has been studied on these properties. The results show that the In0.75Cr0.25P compound is a half metal with 100% spin polarization at the Fermi level and the increment of pressure does not change its half-metallic behavior. The half-metal gap achieved for this compound is variable between 1.38 and 1.5 eV. The interaction between Cr and P atoms in this compound is an anti-ferromagnetic type. It was observed that the total magnetic moment for this compound is about 3 μB. Local magnetic moments change with increasing pressure, but the total magnetic moment remains unaffected by increasing the pressure. Calculations of the optical properties of the In0.75Cr0.25P compound showed that the dominant mechanism for the low-energy photons is due to the induced free carriers of the Cr atom, and the optical properties of this compound, in particular the refractive index in the visible region, change with increasing pressure.