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International audience; Quantum-mechanical calculations are performed to investigate the structural, electronic, and infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopic features of one of the most common radiation-induced defects in diamond: the “dumb-bell” 〈100〉 split self-interstitial. A periodic super-cell approach is used in combination with all-electron basis sets and hybrid functionals of density-functional-theory (DFT), which include a fraction of exact non-local exchange and are known to provide a correct description of the electronic spin localization at the defect, at variance with simpler formulations of the DFT. The effects of both defect concentration and spin state are explicitly addressed. Geometrical constraints are found to prevent the formation of a double bond between the two three-fold coordinated carbon atoms. In contrast, two unpaired electrons are fully localized on each of the carbon atoms involved in the defect. The open-shell singlet state is slightly more stable than the triplet (the energy difference being just 30 meV, as the unpaired electrons occupy orthogonal orbitals) while the closed-shell solution is less stable by about 1.55 eV. The formation energy of the defect from pristine diamond is about 12 eV. The Raman spectrum presents only two peaks of low intensity at wave-numbers higher than the pristine diamond peak (characterized by normal modes extremely localized on the defect), whose positions strongly depend on defect concentration as they blue shift up to 1550 and 1927 cm−1 at infinite defect dilution. The first of these peaks, also IR active, is characterized by a very high IR intensity, and might then be related to the strong experimental feature of the IR spectrum occurring at 1570 cm−1. A second very intense IR peak appears at about 500 cm−1, which, despite being originated from a “wagging” motion of the self-interstitial defect, exhibits a more collective, less localized character.

The thermochemical behavior of α-Al2O3 corundum in the whole temperature range 0-2317 K (melting point) and under pressures up to 12 GPa is predicted by applying ab initio methods based on the density functional theory (DFT), the use of a local basis set and periodic-boundary conditions. Thermodynamic properties are treated both within and beyond the harmonic approximation to the lattice potential. In particular, a recent implementation of the quasi-harmonic approximation, in the Crystal program, is here shown to provide a reliable description of the thermal expansion coefficient, entropy, constant-volume and constant-pressure specific heats, and temperature dependence of the bulk modulus, nearly up to the corundum melting temperature. This is a remarkable outcome suggesting α-Al2O3 to be an almost perfect quasi-harmonic crystal. The effect of using different computational parameters and DFT functionals belonging to different levels of approximations on the accuracy of the thermal properties is tested, providing a reference for further studies involving alumina polymorphs and, more generally, quasi-ionic minerals.

Grossular and andradite are garnet end-members stable under upper mantle conditions. We perform ab initio simulations to investigate the dependence of the bulk modulus on chemical composition of the grossular-andradite solid solution, Ca3Fe(2-2x)Al(2x)(SiO4)3. All-electron local basis sets of Gaussian-type orbitals and the hybrid B3LYP density functional are used. Our calculations predict a linear modulus-composition trend, in contrast to previous conjectures based on "heterogeneous" experimental measurements. We estimate the largest deviation from linearity to be about 0.5 GPa under ambient conditions, and to progressively reduce to less than 0.2 GPa at pressure P = 20 GPa. The bulk modulus is computed over the whole composition range 0 ≤x≤ 1 following two independent approaches: fitting energy-volume data to an equation-of-state and calculating elastic tensors. Results from the two methods are in perfect agreement, assuring consistency and high numerical accuracy of the adopted algorithms.