NanoNET

Introduction

The project NanoNET (Nanoscale Non-equilibrium Electron Transport) represents an extendable Python framework for the electronic structure computations based on the tight-binding method. The code can deal with both finite and periodic systems translated in one, two or three dimensions.

All computations can be governed by means of the python application programming interface (pyAPI) or the command line interface (CLI).

Getting Started

Requirements

NanoNet requires openmpi to be installed in the system:

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install libopenmpi-dev

MacOS

brew install open-mpi

Installing from PiPy

The easiest way to install NanoNet without tests is from the PiPy repository:

pip install nano-net

Installing from sources

The source distribution can be obtained from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/freude/NanoNet.git
cd NanoNet

All other dependencies can be installed at once by invoking the following command from within the source directory:

pip install -r requirements.txt

In order to install the package Nanonet just invoke the following line in the bash from within the source directory:

pip install .

Running the tests

If the source distribution is available, all tests may be run by invoking the following command in the root directory:

nosetests --with-doctest

Examples of usage

• Atomic chain
• Huckel model
• Bulk silicon
• Bulk silicon - initialization via an input file
• Silicon nanowire

Python interface

Below is a short example demonstrating usage of the tb package. More illustrative examples can be found in the ipython notebooks in the directory jupyter_notebooks inside the source directory.

Below we demonstrate band structure computation for a nanoribbon with four atoms per unit cell:

--A--
  |
--A--
  |
--A--
  |
--A--

0. If the package is properly installed, the work starts with the import of all necessary modules:

   import numpy as np
   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   import nanonet.tb as tb
   from nanonet.negf.recursive_greens_functions import recursive_gf
   from nanonet.negf.greens_functions import surface_greens_function
   

1. First, one needs to specify atomic species and corresponding basis sets. We assume that each atom has one s-type atomic orbital with energy -1 eV. It is also possible to use predefined basis sets as is shown in examples in the ipython notebooks.

   orb = tb.Orbitals('A')
   orb.add_orbital(title='s', energy=-1.0)
   

2. Set tight-binding parameters:

   tb.set_tb_params(PARAMS_A_A={"ss_sigma": 1.0})
   

3. Define atomic coordinates for the unit cell:

   input_file = """4
                   Nanostrip
                   A1 0.0 0.0 0.0
                   A2 0.0 1.0 0.0
                   A3 0.0 2.0 0.0
                   A4 0.0 3.0 0.0
                """
   

4. Make instance of the Hamiltonian class and specify periodic boundary conditions if any:

   h = tb.Hamiltonian(xyz=input_file, nn_distance=1.4)
   h.initialize()
   h.set_periodic_bc([[0, 0, 1.0]])
   h_l, h_0, h_r = h.get_hamiltonians()
   

5. Compute DOS and transmission using Green's functions:

   energy = np.linspace(-5.0, 5.0, 150)
   dos = np.zeros((energy.shape[0]))
   tr = np.zeros((energy.shape[0]))
   
   for j, E in enumerate(energy):
       # compute surface Green's functions
       L, R = surface_greens_function(E, h_l, h_0, h_r)
       # recursive Green's functions
       g_trans, grd, grl, gru, gr_left = recursive_gf(E, [h_l], [h_0 + L + R], [h_r])
       # compute DOS
       dos[j] = np.real(np.trace(1j * (grd[0] - grd[0].conj().T)))
       # compute left-lead coupling
       gamma_l = 1j * (L - L.conj().T)
       # compute right-lead coupling
       gamma_r = 1j * (R - R.conj().T)
       # compute transmission
       tr[j] = np.real(np.trace(gamma_l @ g_trans @ gamma_r @ g_trans.conj().T)))
   

6. Plot DOS and transmission spectrum:

   fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 2)
   ax[0].plot(energy, dos, 'k')
   ax[0].set_ylabel(r'DOS (a.u)')
   ax[0].set_xlabel(r'Energy (eV)')
   
   ax[1].plot(energy, tr, 'k')
   ax[1].set_ylabel(r'Transmission (a.u.)')
   ax[1].set_xlabel(r'Energy (eV)')
   fig.tight_layout()
   plt.show()
   

7. Done. The result will appear on the screen.

Authors

• Mykhailo V. Klymenko (mike.klymenko@rmit.edu.au)
• Jackson S. Smith
• Jesse A. Vaitkus
• Jared H. Cole

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge support of the RMIT University, Australian Research Council through grant CE170100026, and National Computational Infrastructure, which is supported by the Australian Government.

References

M.V. Klymenko, J.A. Vaitkus, J.S. Smith, and J.H. Cole, "NanoNET: An extendable Python framework for semi-empirical tight-binding models," Computer Physics Communications, Volume 259, 107676 (2021)