First-principles calculations of the stibnite at the level of modified Becke–Johnson exchange potential

The demand for cheaper, nontoxic and earth-abundant materials as absorbing layer for solar cell is immensely needed to replace scarce, toxic and expensive one. In this regard, chalcogenide materials have considerably attracted the attention of a lot of researchers because of showing a great potential for different applications. Stibnite (Sb₂S₃), a chalcogenide binary material is considerably investigated for exploiting its potential for different energy technologies being a less toxic, abundantly available, stable and efficient, which are the fundamentals for sustainability as well as to realize the dream of green energy. In this study, theoretical calculations of the structural, electronic and optical properties of stibnite (Sb₂S₃) crystal structure are presented using the full potential (FP) linearized augmented plane wave (LAPW) framed within density functional theory (DFT). To incorporate the exchange-correlation part in the total energy functional, besides the local density approximation (LDA), Wu-Cohen parameterized generalized gradient approximation (WC-GGA), Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof parameterized generalized gradient approximation (PBE-GGA), and Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof generalized gradient approximation for solids and surfaces (PBEsol-GGA) are used for the calculations of the structural parameters, where the Trans-Blaha approach of the modified Becke–Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential is used to get more reliable results for the fundamental band gap energy value. These calculations are performed by involving spin-orbit coupling (SOC) contribution. Additionally, optical properties, such as imaginary and real parts of the dielectric function, optical conductivity, absorption coefficient, refractive index, reflectivity, and electron energy loss function are analyzed. Our first-principles calculations show that Wu-Cohen GGA (WC-GGA) reproduces results for lattice parameters comparable to the experimental measurements. The obtained results of the band gap energy and optical properties with TB-mBJ potential are also closer to the experimental data and, endorse its potentiality for the photovoltaics applications.