A novel anion interstitial defect structure in zinc-blende materials: A first-principles study

The low-formation energy structure of anion interstitial defect in zinc-blende materials is usually identified as the tetrahedron central structure where the anion interstitial atom is surrounded by four countercation atoms. A line-type anion interstitial defect structure AD(i)(l), however, is found to be lower in energy than the tetrahedron central anion interstitial defect structure by first-principles calculations. By analyzing the structural and electronical characters of this line-type defect in relative compounds of zinc-blende materials, we attribute this to the electronegativity shift trends and the bond forming, which lead to the hybridization types varying from sp(3) to sp-like and ending at sp. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2016