CCL: CASTEP calculations



Dear Fatima,

Unfortunately you've just missed this year's Castep academic training workshop but in general if you've paid for Accelrys support then you should be able to get help either directly from them or the community fora. The "help" documentation for Castep with Materials Studio isn't too bad either in my experience, it's also fully searchable.

In general Castep help and tutorials can be obtained from the webpage (www.castep.org) and there's also the academic Castep support email list (https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=CASTEP) but be warned that this is for Castep only not Materials Studio, so questions on the Materials Studio interface will not usually be answered - Accelrys are paid to provide this help! 

You can also get Castep to give rudimentary help if you run it from the command-line:

> castep.exe -help <keyword>

where <keyword> is a Castep parameter or cell keyword will cause Castep to tell you about <keyword>. If you can't remember what the keyword is, just search for a relevant bit of text, for example

> castep.exe -help search optics

would get Castep to give you the name of all keywords with "optics" in their name or brief description.

I don't know Materials Studio very well, but I'll answer your questions as best I can:

- From a crystal parameters calculations how can I obtain the material properties of this crystal such as the band gap.?

You need to run a band-structure or density-of-states (DOS) calculation -- from memory I think these are found on the Properties tab -- then plot ("View") the result to see the band gap. Make sure you do this calculation as a continuation of your crystal geometry optimisation calculation to ensure Castep picks up the optimised lattice constants.

- How to make a doping using the material studio?

Select the atom you want to change, then modify its element type either from the drop-down menus or (possibly) by editing the appropriate value in Properties Explorer. Alternatively just delete it and add the one you want at the same location.

- How to obtain the optical properties such as reflectivity, conductivity, dielectric constant etc

I'm pretty sure these are accessible directly from the Properties tab. You need to run an Optics calculation.

What are the primitive cell, super cell etc.

The primitive cell is the smallest possible repeat unit. For example for a diamond structure the primitive unit cell contains 2 atoms, with cell angles of 60 degrees. The primitive cell is often not the conventional unit cell, e.g. the conventional diamond unit cell contains 8 atoms and is cubic.

A supercell is just a simulation cell comprised of multiple unit cells. For example if you're using the 8-atom conventional diamond cell, a 2x2x2 supercell would be twice as big in each dimension and contain 2x2x2x8 = 64 atoms. 

Hope that helps,

Phil Hasnip
(Castep developer)



On 19 August 2013 10:51, fatima serag fatimaserag/ahotmail.com <owner-chemistry%a%ccl.net> wrote:

Sent to CCL by: "fatima  serag" [fatimaserag{:}hotmail.com]
Dear Colleauges of CCL
using the material studio(CASTEP module) to conduct some calculations, and I asked for a help such as a paid work shop or a Traning course to understand how to apply the below points:
        From a crystal parameters calculations how can I obtain the material properties of this crystal such as the band gap.?
        How to make a doping using the material studio?
        How to obtain the optical properties such as reflectivity, conductivity, dielectric constant etc
        What are the primitive cell, super cell etc..
many thanks to receive from you soon....... Fatima

fatimaserag(a)hotmail.com



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Dr Phil Hasnip            Email: phil.hasnip%a%york.ac.uk
Dept of Physics
University of York        Tel:  +44 (0)1904 324624
York YO10 5DD