Insights into the structural complexity and local disorder of crystalline AsTe₃ from semi-automated first-principles modelling

A semi-automated protocol largely based on AiiDA has been developed and exploited to explore the yet-unsolved crystal structure of the recently-discovered AsTe₃ material with potential thermoelectric applications due to its ultralow thermal conductivity. The workflow involves different steps of increasing precision and computational cost, in a sequential approach to generate, refine and evaluate model AsTe₃ structures based on supercells of elemental-Te from the stand point of As/Te chemical disorder. Our studies shed light on the structural complexity that has prevented, to this day, a direct structure determination of the recently-discovered crystalline AsTe₃ material, despite the new synthesis protocol that has led to its obtention in a pure and fully crystalline phase, by congruent crystallization from the parent AsTe₃ glass. Structural models of crystalline AsTe₃ reveal a composition based on an intergrowth of subnanometric As₂Te₃ and Te domains with potentially defected interfaces that intimately interfere with the electronic properties of this material. This repository contains data generated in the course of the structure-construction-and-evaluation protocol for subsets of AsTe₃ structural models obtained at different steps of the workflow, with the full provenance included, in the form of an AiiDA archive. Scripts and workchains developped specifically for this study are also privided, along with the atomic structures of the most relevant AsTe₃ models identified, in common file formats for researchers not familiar with AiiDA databases.