First-principles study of geometric and electronic structures, and optical transition energies of Mn4+impurity ions: K2SiF6 as a prototype

In this study, we present the results of first-principles calculations conducted within the density functional theory to investigate the geometric and electronic structures of the ground 4A2 and excited 2E and 4T2 states, as well as the optical transition energies between these states, in the prototype system of K2SiF6:Mn4+. To achieve this, we employed a comprehensive evaluation of the five representative exchange-correlation functionals, enabling the development of a state-of-art calculation scheme that effectively describes the geometric and electronic structures of the excited 2E and 4T2 states. The calculated excitation, emission and zero-phonon line energies of the optical transitions between the ground 4A2 state and the excited 2E and 4T2 states demonstrate a better agreement with experimental results. However, we observed that the conventional and widely-used approach based on the analysis of the electronic density of states diagrams derived from the ground state calculations failed to accurately evaluate the vertical optical transition energies from the 4A2 ground state to the excited 2E and 4T2 states when compared to experimental data. The calculation technique developed in this study holds the potential for widespread application to other combinations of host materials and impurity ion, which is of great importance for future developments in the field of optical materials.

Automated summary

In this study, first-principles calculations were conducted to investigate the geometric and electronic structures and optical transition energies of K2SiF6:Mn4+. A state-of-art calculation scheme was developed using comprehensive evaluation of exchange-correlation functionals, resulting in better agreement with experimental results. However, the conventional approach failed to accurately evaluate the optical transition energies, indicating the need for new calculation techniques in the field of optical materials.