Structural, elastic and electronic properties of metastable diamond-like Ti, Fe and Zn monocarbides: Density functional-based tight binding calculations

Structural, elastic and electronic properties of diamond-like allotropes of Ti, Fe and Zn monocarbides were calculated by means of density functional-based tight binding method (DFTB) and analyzed in comparison with those for cubic (B1) monocarbides. Our results predict that cubic (B1) MC phases are likely to be essentially harder than diamond-like allotropes. We found that all considered phases are paramagnetic metals, except diamond-like TiC which becomes semi-metallic.