Tunable Carrier Dynamics in Carbide Antiperovskites via A-Site Cation Substitution

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to explore how substituting A-site cations in carbide antiperovskites affects their electronic structure and carrier relaxation, revealing pathways to tune carrier lifetimes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed microscopic insight into how A-site cation substitution influences carrier dynamics in carbide antiperovskites.

Findings

Ca6CSe4 has an 18 times longer carrier lifetime than Sr6CSe4.

Carrier cooling occurs within 1-9 ps, slowing near band edges.

Lattice fluctuations and nonadiabatic couplings govern relaxation mechanisms.

Abstract

We present a comprehensive first-principles investigation of the electronic structure and excited-state carrier dynamics in the carbide antiperovskites Ca$_6$CSe$_4$ and Sr$_6$CSe$_4$. Using many-body perturbation theory ($G_0W_0$/BSE), we show that both materials are direct band gap semiconductors with quasiparticle gaps of 1.66 eV (Ca) and 1.22 eV (Sr), lying in the visible-near-infrared range, and exhibit moderate excitonic binding energies. Ab initio nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations at 300 K reveal distinct relaxation mechanisms governed by the interplay of band gap, nonadiabatic (NA) couplings, and electronic decoherence. In Ca$_6$CSe$_4$, stronger lattice fluctuations induce 38% larger band gap variations and 28% faster decoherence, which, together with approximately 53% weaker NA couplings, suppress nonradiative recombination and yield lifetimes nearly 18 times longer (40.3 ns) than in Sr$_6$CSe$_4$ (2.2 ns). Hot-carrier cooling in both systems occurs on picosecond timescales (1-9 ps) with a pronounced slow down near the band egdes. Overall, our results demonstrate that A-site cation substitution provides an effective route to control carrier lifetimes and relaxation pathways in antiperovskites, offering microscopic insight into lattice-driven carrier dynamics and guiding their experimental realization and optimization.