First principles investigation of barium chalcogenide ternary alloys

The ab initio full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method within density functional theory was applied to study the effect of composition on the structural, electronic, thermodynamic and optical properties of BaS1-xOx, BaS1-xSex and BaS1-xTex ternary alloys. The effect of composition on lattice parameter, bulk modulus, band gap, refractive index and dielectric function was investigated. The microscopic origins of the gap bowing were explained by using the approach of Zunger and co-workers. The thermodynamic stability of these alloys was investigated by calculating the excess enthalpy of mixing Delta H-m as well as the phase diagram. in addition to FP-LAPW method, the composition dependence of the refractive index and the dielectric constant was studied by different models. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.