Exact muffin-tin orbital based fully relativistic simulation of device materials: Electronic charge and spin current

Abstract

We report the implementation of the fully relativistic exact muffin-tin orbital (EMTO) method for both first-principles electronic structure and quantum transport simulation of magnetic and nonmagnetic device materials. We consider a device-material system containing the inevitable atomic disorders in contact with different electrode materials. The Kohn-Sham Dirac equations for both cases with and without spin polarization are self-consistently solved for the central device-material system with the Green's function method. The fully relativistic charge-current density, conventional Pauli spin current density, and transmission coefficient are formulated with the nonequilibrium Green's function technique. To treat the influence of disordered defects/impurities, we combine the nonequilibrium Green's function in the Keldysh space with the coherent potential approximation, and account for the multiple disorder scattering by vertex corrections to a two-Green's-function correlator to calculate the disorder-averaged charge and spin current density. As a demonstration of the present implementation, we calculate the electronic structure of the bulk Pt, Co, and HgTe and Rashba-type surface states of Au and Ag/Ag2Bi1 alloy surfaces. We find that the EMTO electronic structures of all the calculated systems agree well with the results of the projector-augmented wave method. The electronic charge and spin transport implementations are tested with perfect and disordered Cu/Co/Pt/Cu junctions. The important effects of interface and atomic disorders are illustrated for the spin transport in the presence of relativistic effects. The implementation of the fully relativistic EMTO-based device-material simulation provides an important tool for analyzing both the charge and spin transport through nanostructures and materials, significantly extending the capability of first-principles material design for spintronic device applications.