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Item Evolutionary algorithm based structure search for hard ruthenium carbides(Institute of Physics, 2015) Harikrishnan, G.; Ajith, K.M.; Chandra, S.; Valsakumar, M.C.An exhaustive structure search employing evolutionary algorithm and density functional theory has been carried out for ruthenium carbides, for the three stoichiometries Ru1C1, Ru2C1 and Ru3C1, yielding five lowest energy structures. These include the structures from the two reported syntheses of ruthenium carbides. Their emergence in the present structure search in stoichiometries, unlike the previously reported ones, is plausible in the light of the high temperature required for their synthesis. The mechanical stability and ductile character of all these systems are established by their elastic constants, and the dynamical stability of three of them by the phonon data. Rhombohedral structure is found to be energetically the most stable one in Ru1C1 stoichiometry and hexagonal structure , the most stable in Ru3C1 stoichiometry. RuC-Zinc blende system is a semiconductor with a band gap of 0.618 eV while the other two stable systems are metallic. Employing a semi-empirical model based on the bond strength, the hardness of RuC-Zinc blende is found to be a significantly large value of ?37 GPa while a fairly large value of ?21GPa is obtained for the RuC-Rhombohedral system. The positive formation energies of these systems show that high temperature and possibly high pressure are necessary for their synthesis. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.Item Pressure-induced variation of structural, elastic, vibrational, electronic, thermodynamic properties and hardness of Ruthenium Carbides(Elsevier Ltd, 2016) Harikrishnan, H.; Ajith, K.M.; Natarajan, S.; Chandra, S.; Mundachali Cheruvalath, V.Three of the five structures obtained from the evolutionary algorithm based structure search of Ruthenium Carbide systems in the stoichiometries RuC, Ru2C and Ru3C are relaxed at different pressures in the range 0-200 GPa and the pressure-induced variation of their structural, elastic, dynamical, electronic and thermodynamic properties as well as hardness is investigated in detail. No structural transition is present for these systems in this pressure range. RuC-Zinc blende is mechanically and dynamically unstable close to 100 GPa. RuC-Rhombohedral and Ru3C-Hexagonal retain mechanical and dynamical stability up to 200 GPa. For all three systems the electronic bands and density of states spread out with pressure and the band gap increases with pressure for the semiconducting RuC-Zinc blende. From the computed IR spectrum of RuC-Zinc blende at 50 GPa it is noted that the IR frequency increases with pressure. Using a semi-empirical model for hardness it is estimated that hardness of all three systems consistently increases with pressure. The hardness of RuC-Zinc blende increases towards the superhard regime up to the limiting pressure of its mechanical stability while that of RuC-Rhombohedral becomes 30 GPa at the pressure of 150 GPa. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.