Density functional study of the group II phosphide semiconductor compounds under hydrostatic pressure

The full-potential all-electron linearized augmented plane wave plus local orbital (FP-LAPW+lo) method, as implemented in the suite of software WIEN2k, has been used to systematically investigate the structural and electronic properties of the group II phosphide semiconductor compounds M3P2 (M = Be, Mg and Ca). The exchange-correlation functional was approximated as a generalized gradient functional introduced by Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (GGA96) and Engel-Vosko (EV-GGA). Internal parameters were optimized by relaxing the atomic positions in the force directions using the Hellman-Feynman approach. The structural parameters, bulk modules, cohesive energy, band structures and density of states have been calculated and compared to the available experimental and theoretical results. These compounds are predicted to be semiconductors with the direct band gap of about 1.60, 2.55 and 2.62 eV for Be3P2, Mg3P2 and Ca3P2, respectively. The effects of hydrostatic pressure on the behavior of band parameters such as band gap, valence bandwidths and anti-symmetric gap (the energy gap between two parts of the valence bands) are investigated using both GGA96 and EV-GGA. The contribution of s, p and d orbitals of different atoms to the density of states is discussed in detail