First-principles studies of FeS$_2$ using many-body perturbation theory in the $G_0W_0$ approximation

Schena, Timo; Bihlmayer, Gustav; Blügel, Stefan

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.88.235203

Journal Article

FZJ-2013-06453

First-principles studies of FeS$_2$ using many-body perturbation theory in the $G_0W_0$ approximation

Schena, T. (Corresponding author)FZJ* ; Bihlmayer, G.FZJ* ; Blügel, S.FZJ*

2013
APS College Park, Md.

Physical review / B 88(23), 235203 (2013) [10.1103/PhysRevB.88.235203]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/5706 doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.88.235203

Abstract: We present a theoretical study on iron pyrite using density-functional theory (DFT) and the GW approximation to many-body perturbation theory. The fundamental band gap of iron pyrite is determined by iron 3d states at the valence band edge and a sulfur 3p-dominated conduction band at Γ. The gap is quite sensitive to structural changes as well as to the applied electronic structure method. We found that this p-dominated band does not play a significant role for the optical absorption, leading to a large difference between the optical and fundamental band gaps of iron pyrite. As a consequence the GW-corrected energies result in no considerable change of the optical band gap as compared to standard DFT, both being in reasonable agreement with experiment. However, we show that the fundamental band gap is reduced to about 0.3 eV in GW, which may contribute to the low open-circuit voltage of about 0.2 V observed in iron pyrite solar cells, representing a serious bottleneck for photovoltaic applications. To demonstrate that this unconventional reduction of the p-d gap is not unique for iron pyrite, similarities for FeS2 in the marcasite structure are presented.

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