[Pw_forum] Biaxial Strian Silicon
Cameron Foss
cjfoss at umass.edu
Thu Aug 14 23:28:06 CEST 2014
Hello all,
I am trying to study phonons in silicon under biaxial strain, which occurs
when you grow thin films of silicon over a germanium(or SiGe) bulk, which
has a slightly larger lattice constant than silicon, thus stretching the
silicon out. This type of procedure stretches silicon in the xy directions
and slightly compresses it in the z direction. This consequently distorts
the symmetry of the crystal.
I have ran some strained cases; in which I "strain" the crystal by changing
the lattice vectors in the CELL_PARAMETERS CARD and the atomic positions
like so:
ATOMIC_POSITIONS {alat}
Si 0 0 0
Si 0.255 0.255 0.25
CELL_PARAMETERS {alat}
-0.51 0.00 0.5
0.00 0.51 0.5
-0.51 0.51 0.00
Whilst the lattice constant remained the equilibrium lattice constant
5.431Angs.
However, I would like to use the vc-relax calculation to relax the
structure to the strained amount...so I know that the structure is
optimized. Although I keep getting an orthogonal operation error.
Here is the vc-relax input code and the error:
&control
calculation='vc-relax'
restart_mode='from_scratch',
outdir='/home/cameron/QE/espresso-5.1/wktmp',
pseudo_dir='/home/cameron/QE/espresso-5.1/pseudo',
prefix='relax'
/
&system
ibrav=2, celldm(1)=10.263, nat=2, ntyp=1,
ecutwfc =24.0
/
&electrons
conv_thr = 1.0d-10
mixing_beta = 0.4
/
&ions
ion_dynamics='damp'
/
&cell
cell_dynamics='damp-w',
press=55.0,
cell_dofree='2Dxy'
/
ATOMIC_SPECIES
Si 28.0855 Si.pz-vbc.UPF
ATOMIC_POSITIONS
Si 0.00 0.00 0.00
Si 0.25 0.25 0.25
K_POINTS AUTOMATIC
4 4 4 1 1 1
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Error in routine checkallsym (2):
not orthogonal operation
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I have two main questions: Did I incorrectly manually "strain" the lattice
structure in the first case?
And how can I use/fix the vc-relax code to simulate the strained structure?
Best,
Cameron
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