First-principles study of structural, electronic, elastic and phonon properties of AB2O4(A=Ge,Si;B=Mg,Zn,Cd) spinel oxides
Abstract
The structural, electronic, elastic and phonon properties of the cubic spinels AB2O4 (A = Ge, Si; B = Mg, Zn, Cd) compounds at zero pressure are investigated via density functional theory (DFT) using the Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange–correlation functional. It has been shown that the predicted values of the structural parameters (a0 and u), bulk modulus (B), elastic constants (Cij), shear modulus G and B/G ratio are in good agreement with the previously reported results. The phonon dispersion curves of the AB2O4 (A = Ge, Si; B = Mg, Zn, Cd) are calculated for the first time using the direct method. The estimated phonon spectra indicate that GeMg2O4, GeZn2O4, GeCd2O4, SiMg2O4 and SiZn2O4 are dynamically stable in the cubic spinel structure.
