Polaron formation, native defects, and electronic conduction in metal tungstates

Abstract

Iron tungstate (FeWO4) and manganese tungstate (MnWO4) belong to a family of wolframite-type materials that has applications in various areas, including supercapacitors, batteries, and multiferroics. A detailed understanding of bulk properties and defect physics in these transition-metal tungstates has been lacking, however, impeding possible improvement of their functional properties. Here, we report a first-principles study of FeWO4 and MnWO4 using screened hybrid density-functional calculations. We find that in both compounds the electronic structures near the band edges are predominantly the highly localized transition-metal d states, which allows for the formation of both hole polarons at the Fe (Mn) sites and electron polarons at the W sites. The dominant native point defects in FeWO4 (MnWO4) under realistic synthesis conditions are, however, the hole polarons at the Fe (Mn) sites and negatively charged Fe (Mn) vacancies. The presence of low-energy and highly mobile polarons provides an explanation for the good p-type conductivity observed in experiments and the ability of the materials to store energy via a pseudocapacitive mechanism.