• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) effect is known to be the physical origin for various exotic magnetic phenomena in the low-dimensional systems. Recently, SOC also draws lots of attention in the study on magnetically doped thermoelectric alloys to determine their properties as the thermoelectric application as well as the topological insulator via the exact electronic structures determination near the Fermi level. In this research, aiming to investigate the spin-orbit coupling effect on the structural properties such as the lattice constants and the bulk modulus of the most widely investigated thermoelectric host material, $Bi_2Te_3$, we carried out the first-principles electronic structure calculation using the all-electron FLAPW (full-potential linearized augmented plane-wave) method. Employing both the local density approximation (LDA) and the generalized gradient approximation (GGA), the structural optimization is achieved by varying the in-plane lattice constant fixing the perpendicular lattice constant and vice versa, to find that the SOC effect increases the equilibrium lattices slightly in both directions while it markedly reduces the bulk modulus value implying the strong orientational dependence, which are attributed to the material's intrinsic structural anisotropy.