Disordered Icosahedral Boron-Rich Solids − A Theoretical Study of Thermodynamic Stability and Properties

This thesis is a theoretical study of configurational disorder in icosahedral boronrich solids, in particular boron carbide, including also the development of a methodological framework for treating configurational disorder in such materials, namely superatom-special quasirandom structure (SA-SQS). In terms of its practical implementations, the SA-SQS method is demonstrated to be capable of efficiently modeling configurational disorder in icosahedral boron-rich solids, whiles the thermodynamic stability as well as the properties of the configurationally disordered icosahedral boron-rich solids, modeled from the SA-SQS method, can be directly investigated, using the density functional theory (DFT). In case of boron carbide, especially B4C and B13C2 compositions, the SA-SQS method is used for modeling configurational disorder, arising from a high concentration of low-energy B/C substitutional defects. The results, obtained from the DFT-based calculations, demonstrate that configurational disorder of B and C atoms in boron carbide is not only thermodynamically favored at high temperature, but it also plays an important role in altering the properties of boron carbide − for example, restoration of higher rhombohedral symmetry of B4C, a metal-tononmetal transition and a drastic increase in the elastic moduli of B13C2. The configurational disorder can also explain large discrepancies, regarding the properties of boron carbide, between experiments and previous theoretical calculations, having been a long standing controversial issue in the field of icosahedral boronrich solids, as the calculated properties of the disordered boron carbides are found to be in qualitatively good agreement with those, observed in experiments. In order to investigate the configurational evolution of B4C as a function of temperature, beyond the SA-SQS level, a brute-force cluster-expansion method in combination with Monte Carlo simulations is implemented. The results demonstrate that configurational disorder in B4C indeed essentially takes place within the icosahedra in a way that justifies the focus on low-energy defect patterns of the superatom picture. The investigation of the thermodynamic stability of icosahedral carbon-rich