Electronic States of Nanostructured Systems: Titanium and Zirconia

Abstract

The density functional method with pseudopotentials are used to study the electron states of nanoparticles and nanostructured systems: chains, films, and three-dimensional nanosystems of titanium and zirconia. It is shown that all studied titanium nanosystems have the density of electronic states (DES) of the metallic type, but zirconia nanosystem demonstrates a dielectric energy gap in the vicinity of the Fermi level. The density of states of nanostructured titanium is close in shape to DES of the single crystal but has a smoother shape due to disordering of the atomic arrangement. The forbidden band width of the nanostructured zirconia is smaller as compared to the corresponding width in crystalline ZrO₂, supposedly because of incomplete saturation of ionic bonds.