Ab Initio Study on Dopant Relaxation Mechanism in Ti and Ce Cationically Substituted in Wurtzite Gallium Nitride

The changes in properties of materials upon introduction of impurities is well documented but less is known about the location of foreign atoms in different hosts. This study is carried out with the motivation to explore dopant location in hexagonal GaN using density functional theory based calculations. The dopant site location of the individual dopants Ti, Ce, and Ti-Ce codoped wurtzite GaN was investigated by placing the dopants at cationic lattice sites as well as off-cationic sites along the c-axis. The geometry optimization relaxed individual dopants on cationic Ga sites but in the case of codoping Ce settled at site 7.8% away along [0001 ¯] and Ti adjusted itself at site 14% away along [0001] from regular cationic sites. The analysis of the results indicates that optimized geometry is sensitive to the starting position of the dopants. The magnetic exchange interactions between Ti and Ce ions are responsible for their structural relaxation in the matrix.