Abstract
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We
report a computational survey of chemical doping of silver(II)
fluoride, which has recently attracted attention as an analogue of
La2CuO4—a known precursor of high-temperature
superconductors. By introducing fluorine defects (vacancies or interstitial
adatoms) into the crystal structure, we obtain nonstoichiometric,
electron- and hole-doped polymorphs of AgF2±x. We find that the ground-state solutions show a strong tendency
for localization of defects and of the associated electronic states,
and the resulting doped phases exhibit insulating or semiconducting
properties. Furthermore, the distribution of Ag(I)/Ag(III) sites which
appear in the crystal structure points to the propensity of the AgF2 system for phase separation upon chemical doping, which is
in line with observations from previous experimental attempts. Overall,
our results indicate that chemical modification may not be a feasible
way to achieve doping in bulk silver(II) fluoride, which is considered
essential for the emergence of high-Tc superconductivity.
A
theoretical study of the 1/32, 1/16, and 1/8 electron-
and hole-doped AgF2 reveals that vacancies and adatoms
have a tendency for localization, that is, formation of mixed-, rather
than intermediate-valence, fluoride systems, which results in a persistent
band gap at the Fermi level.
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