Hydrostatic pressure effect on the structural parameters of GaSb semiconducting material: Ab-initio calculations

Abstract

Ab-initio calculations were performed to investigate the ground state and hydrostatic pressure effecton the structural properties of GaSb semiconducting material. The projected augmented wavepseudopotentials (PAW) approach in the framework of the density functional theory (DFT) asimplemented in the Quantum Espresso code was used. The exchange-correlation functional wasdescribed with the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). Utilizing the energy - volume (E-V)data, our values of the equilibrium lattice constant, the bulk modulus, and the pressure derivative ofthe bulk modulus of GaSb semiconductor obtained from the Birch–Murnaghan equation of statewere found 6.220 Å, 44.84 GPa and 4.22, respectively. Our obtained data agree well with theavailable experimental values and other theoretical data of the literature. In addition, the meltingpoint, the lattice thermal expansion coefficient and the microhardness of our material of interestwere also calculated and compared with the available experimental data of the literature.