Exciting imperfection. Real-structure effects in magnesium-, cadmium-, and zinc-oxide

We employ recent ab-initio methods and theoretical spectroscopy techniques that rely on heavy numerical calculations to describe electronic excitations in non-ideal crystals of three group-II oxides. We study the ideal equilibrium polymorphs of these oxides, for gaining a thorough understanding as well as the necessary confidence in our approaches to generalize and apply them to the electronic excitations in imperfect crystals. As such imperfections we take the influence of strain, the alloying of the different oxides, an intrinsic point defect, and free electrons in the lowest conduction band into account. We employ the DFT results as input in order to compute quasiparticle electronic structures, which are in good agreement with experimental findings. According to Hedin's equations for interacting electrons, the electron-hole interaction is taken into account by solving a Bethe-Salpeter equation for the polarization function. Thereafter the equilibrium polymorphs of ideal bulk MgO, ZnO, and CdO and investigates the structure of their valence and conduction bands are described. We present densities of states and effective masses, as well as natural band discontinuities. Furthermore, our description of the dielectric function, which takes excitonic effects into account, enables us to derive the electron-energy loss function. The influence of uniaxial and biaxial strain on the ordering of the valence bands in ZnO is investigated. In addition, we explore the electronic band structure of the non-equilibrium wurtzite structures of MgO and CdO. We predict valence-band splittings and band gaps as they might occur at interfaces of Mgo or CdO with ZnO substrates. Thereafter we study pseudobinary alloys by means of a cluster expansion method. Due to the different crystal structures of the respective oxides, i.e. rocksalt and wurtzite, the description of their heterostructural combination has to be achieved. The electronic and optical properties of the group-II oxide alloys are calculated and discussed with respect to different growth conditions. Then the oxygen vacancy in MgO is studied. We show how the inclusion of excitonic effects in the many-body calculations allows us to unravel experimental observations. Thereafter we calculate the frequency-dependent absorption of ZnO, accounting for the first time for excitonic effects and free electrons in the lowest conduction band within a first-principles framework. Finally, we summarize our insights regarding the influence of imperfections on the group-II oxides. (orig.)