The electronic structure of NaIrO₃, Mott insulator or band insulator?

الأصل · EN

Motivated by the unveiled complexity of nonmagnetic insulating behavior in pentavalent post-perovskite NaIrO₃, we have studied its electronic structure and phase diagram in the plane of Coulomb repulsive interaction and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) by using the newly developed local density approximation plus Gutzwiller method. Our theoretical study proposes the metal-insulator transition can be generated by two different physical pictures: renormalized band insulator or Mott insulator regime. For the realistic material parameters in NaIrO₃, Coulomb interaction U=2.0 (J=U/4) eV and SOC strength η=0.33 eV, it tends to favor the renormalized band insulator picture as revealed by our study.