Structural, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of UN Systematic density functional calculations

A systematic first-principle study is performed to calculate the lattice parameters electronic structure and thermodynamic properties of UN using the local-density approximation (LDA)+U and the generalized gradient approximation (GGA)+U formalisms To properly describe the strong correlation in the U 5f electrons we optimized the U parameter in calculating the total energy lattice parameters and bulk modulus at the nonmagnetic (NM) ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) configurations Our results show that by choosing the Hubbard U around 2 eV within the GGA+U approach it is promising to cor rectly and consistently describe the above mentioned properties of UN The localization behavior of 5f electrons is found to be stronger than that of UC and our electronic analysis indicates that the effective charge of UN can be represented as U1 71+N1 71- As for the thermodynamic study the phonon dispersion illustrates the stability of UN and we further predict the lattice vibration energy thermal expansion and specific heat by utilizing the quasiharmonic approximation Our calculated specific heat is well consistent with experiments (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reserved