DFT COMPUTATION OF THE BAND STRUCTURE AND DENSITY OF STATE FOR ZnO HALITE STRUCTURE USING FHI-aims CODE.

This research work is on Density Functional Theory (DFT) within Local Density Approximation as parameterised by Perdew and Wang (pw-lda).The calculation was performed using Fritz Haber Institute Ab-initio Molecular Simulations (FHI-aims) code based on numerical atomic-centered orbital basis sets. The electronic band structure, density of state (DOS) and band gap energy were calculated for ZnO compound. The band structure and Density of States (DOS) diagrams are plotted from the calculated equilibrium lattice parameters. The experimentally lattice constant values were used to calculate the minimum total energy. The calculated electronic band structure results show that ZnO (Halite) is an indirect semiconductor with energy band gap of 0.89 eV. Hence, the HOMO is -0.863382 eV at L_symmetry point and LUMO is 0.0239417 eV at ᴦ- point. The DOS energy level within the compound shows considerable high state of electron occupation and the DOS observed around the Fermi level at zero level indicate that it has conducting properties. In general, FHI-aims code has shown better accuracy and prediction of band structure calculation within reasonable computational methods.