Electron correlation and the phase diagram of Si

Abstract

Previous first-principles calculations of the melting properties of Si, based on the local-density approximation (LDA) for electronic exchange-correlation energy, under-predict the melting temperature by ~ 20%. We present new first-principles results demonstrating that this problem is due to non-cancellation of exchange-correlation errors between the semiconducting solid and the metallic liquid. It is shown that other sources of error, particularly those due to system size and Brillouin-zone sampling, can be made negligible. The same LDA errors cause an underprediction of the pressure of the diamond-Si --> beta-tin-Si transition. The generalized-gradient approximation largely corrects both features of the Si phase diagram.

4 pages

References in corpus (1)

• Iron under Earth's core conditions: Liquid-state thermodynamics and high-pressure melting curve

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