Light Transition Metal Monatomic Chains

TL;DR

This study explores the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of 3d transition metal monatomic chains, revealing their tendency to form zigzag structures and their potential for half-metallicity, with implications for nanoscale magnetic materials.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive first-principles analysis of various chain geometries and their properties, highlighting the effects of dimerization and finite size on stability and electronic behavior.

Findings

Most chains favor zigzag over linear structures.

Dimerization significantly lowers energy and affects properties.

Certain chains become half-metallic after structural transformation.

Abstract

In this paper we investigated structural, electronic and magnetic properties of 3d (light) transition metal (TM) atomic chains using first-principles pseudopotential plane wave calculations. Periodic linear, dimerized linear and planar zigzag chain structures and their short segments consisting of finite number of atoms have been considered. Like Cu, the periodic, linear chains of Mn, Co and Ni correspond to a local shallow minimum. However, for most of the infinite periodic chains, neither linear nor dimerized linear structures are favored; to lower their energy the chains undergo a structural transformation to form planar zigzag and dimerized zigzag geometry. Dimerization in both infinite and finite chains are much stronger than the usual Peierls distortion and appear to depend on the number of 3d-electrons. As a result of dimerization, a significant energy lowering occurs which, in turn, influences the stability and physical properties. Metallic linear chain of Vanadium becomes half-metallic upon dimerization. Infinite linear chain of Scandium also becomes half-metallic upon transformation to zigzag structure. An interplay between the magnetic ground state and atomic as well as electronic structure of the chain has been revealed. The end effects influence the geometry, energetics and magnetic ground state of the finite chains. Structure optimization performed using noncollinear approximation indicates significant differences from the collinear approximation. Variation of the cohesive energy of infinite and finite-size chains with respect to the number of 3d-electrons are found to mimic the bulk behavior pointed out by Friedel. The spin-orbit coupling of finite chains are found to be negligibly small.