First-principles investigation of electronic, structural, and vibrational properties of a-Si3N4

Using a density-functional scheme, we investigate the electronic, structural, and vibrational properties of amorphous silicon nitride. Through a Car-Parrinello molecular-dynamics simulation, we generate a model structure formed mainly by a network of SiN4 tetrahedra a large fraction of which are edge sharing. Only a small fraction of atoms are overcoordinated and undercoordinated. First, the structural properties such as angular distributions, atomic arrangements in first-neighbor shells, the neutron total structure factor, the radial distribution function, and pair-correlation functions are examined. Next, the electronic properties are analyzed by considering the quasiparticle density of states which is calculated through the GW method. Good agreement is found with experimental data when available. Successively, we focus on a range of vibrational spectra. First, the vibrational density of states is analyzed in terms of its decomposition into N and Si contributions. Then, we investigate the Born effective charge tensors, the high-frequency, and static dielectric constants and calculate the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function in the infrared. Therefrom we obtain the infrared-absorption spectrum and the refractive index that are found to be in accord with experimental measurements. Moreover, we address the Raman spectrum which is compared with available experimental data. Electronic structure and vibrational properties of the point defects present in our model are also discussed. Density-functional and GW schemes appear to be appropriate for modeling materials based on silicon nitride. In particular, our modeling of silicon nitride achieved a successful level of comparison with experiments. This allows us to infer that a-Si3N4 features a high content of edge-sharing tetrahedra, which are absent in the crystalline phases of silicon nitride at ambient conditions.