Global Exploration of the Enthalpy Landscape of Calcium Carbide

The enthalpy landscape of CaC2 was investigated on the ab initio level, and possible (meta)stable structures are predicted. Simulated annealing was used as a global exploration method for the determination of the local minima on the enthalpy landscapes, where the only information supplied was the number of atoms per unit cell. Subsequently, the structure candidates found were locally optimized. At all stages of the search, the energy calculations were performed on the ab initio level. Furthermore, we investigated the enthalpies of different modifications as a function of pressure, and we found that, at a transition pressure of about 30 GPa, CaC2 should transform from a 6-fold coordinated structure resembling a rock-salt structure to an 8-fold coordinated one similar to the CsCl structure. At standard pressure, two new energetically low-lying (metastable) structures were found, and at high pressure an additional new metastable structure was also predicted to be capable of existence.