Optical Properties of Correlated Materials -- or Why Intelligent Windows may look Dirty

Abstract

Materials with strong electronic Coulomb correlations play an increasing role in modern materials applications. "Thermochromic" systems, which exhibit thermally induced changes in their optical response, provide a particularly interesting case. The optical switching associated with the metal-insulator transition of vanadium dioxide, for example, has been proposed for use in numerous applications, ranging from anti-laser shields to "intelligent" windows, which selectively filter radiative heat in hot weather conditions. Are present-day electronic structure techniques able to describe, or -- eventually even predict -- such a kind of behavior ? How far are we from materials design using correlated oxides ? These are the central questions we try to address in this article. We review recent attempts of calculating optical properties of correlated materials within dynamical mean field theory, and summarize results for vanadium dioxide obtained within a novel scheme aiming at particularly simple and efficient calculations of optical transition matrix elements within localized basis sets. Finally, by optimizing the geometry of "intelligent windows", we argue that this kind of technique can in principle be used to provide guidance for experiments, thus giving a rather optimistic answer to the above questions.

arXiv comment11 pages, 4 figures, Phys. Status Solidi B 246, in print (2009), also available as psi-k Scientific Highlight of the Month, no. 88, August 2008, http://www.psi-k.org/newsletters/News_88/Highlight_88.pdf

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Optical properties of correlated materials -- Generalized Peierls approach and its application to VO2
• Resolving the VO${}_2$ controversy: Mott mechanism dominates the insulator-to-metal transition
• Electronics with correlated oxides: SrVO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ as a Mott transistor
• Asymmetric band widening by screened exchange competing with local correlations in SrVO3: new surprises on an old compound from combined GW and dynamical mean field theory GW+DMFT
• Charge Distribution Near Oxygen Vacancies in Reduced Ceria
• Thermoelectricity in correlated narrow-gap semiconductors
• Rare-Earth vs. Heavy Metal Pigments and their Colors from First Principles
• Optical properties of VO${}_2$ films at the phase transition: influence of substrate and electronic correlations
• QSGW+DMFT: an electronic structure scheme for the iron pnictides and beyond
• Pitfalls and solutions for perovskite transparent conductors