We present a theoretical first-principles method to calculate the free energy of a magnetic system in its high-temperature paramagnetic phase, including vibrational, electronic, and magnetic contributions. The method for calculating free energies is based on ab initio molecular dynamics and combines a treatment of disordered magnetism using disordered local moments molecular dynamics with the temperature-dependent effective potential method to obtain the vibrational contribution to the free energy. We illustrate the applicability of the method by obtaining the anharmonic free energy for the paramagnetic cubic and the antiferromagnetic orthorhombic phases of chromium nitride. The influence of lattice dynamics on the transition between the two phases is demonstrated by constructing the temperature-pressure phase diagram.

A semiclassical model for studying charge transport in a two-dimensional molecular lattice is presented and applied to both a well ordered system and a system with disorder. The model includes both intra-and inter-molecular electron-lattice interactions and the focus of the studies is to describe the dynamics of a charge carrier in the system. In particular, we study the dynamics of the system in which the polaron solution is dynamically stable. It is found that the parameter space for which the polaron is moving through the system is quite restricted and that the polaron is immobile for large electron-phonon coupling and weak intermolecular electron interactions and dynamically unstable and disassociates into a delocalized electronic state decoupled from the lattice for small electron-phonon coupling and strong intermolecular electron interactions. Disorder further limits the parameter space in which the polaron is mobile. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Simulations of defects in paramagnetic materials at high temperature constitute a formidable challenge to solid-state theory due to the interaction of magnetic disorder, vibrations, and structural relaxations. CrN is a material where these effects are particularly large due to a strong magnetolattice coupling and a tendency for deviations from the nominal 1:1 stoichiometry. In this work, we present a first-principles study of nitrogen vacancies and nitrogen interstitials in CrN at elevated temperature. We report on formation energetics, the geometry of interstitial nitrogen dimers, and the impact on the electronic structure caused by the defects. We find a vacancy formation energy of 2.28 eV with a small effect of temperature, i.e., a formation energy for N interstitial in the form of a 111 -oriented split bond of 3.77 eV with an increase to 3.97 at 1000 K. Vacancies are found to add three electrons, while split-bond interstitial adds one electron to the conduction band. The band gap of defect-free CrN is smeared out due to vibrations, although it is difficult to draw a conclusion about the exact temperature at which the band gap closes from our calculations. However, it is clear that at 900 K there is a nonzero density of electronic states at the Fermi level. At 300 K, our results indicate a border case where the band gap is about to close.

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We present a theoretical scheme to calculate the elastic constants of magnetic materials in the high-temperature paramagnetic state. Our approach is based on a combination of disordered local moments picture and ab initio molecular dynamics (DLM-MD). Moreover, we investigate a possibility to enhance the efficiency of the simulations of elastic properties using the recently introduced method: symmetry imposed force constant temperature-dependent effective potential (SIFC-TDEP). We have chosen cubic paramagnetic CrN as a model system. This is done due to its technological importance and its demonstrated strong coupling between magnetic and lattice degrees of freedom. We have studied the temperature-dependent single-crystal and polycrystalline elastic constants of paramagentic CrN up to 1200 K. The obtained results at T = 300 K agree well with the experimental values of polycrystalline elastic constants as well as the Poisson ratio at room temperature. We observe that the Young's modulus is strongly dependent on temperature, decreasing by ∼14% from T = 300 K to 1200 K. In addition we have studied the elastic anisotropy of CrN as a function of temperature and we observe that CrN becomes substantially more isotropic as the temperature increases. We demonstrate that the use of Birch law may lead to substantial errors for calculations of temperature induced changes of elastic moduli. The proposed methodology can be used for accurate predictions of mechanical properties of magnetic materials at temperatures above their magnetic order-disorder phase transition.