Density of States & Band Structure

These are two of the most important post-processing analyses for understanding the electronic properties of a material.

• Band Structure: Plots the electron energy levels (bands) along high-symmetry paths in the Brillouin zone. This allows you to determine if a material is a metal, semiconductor, or insulator, and to find the band gap.
• Density of States (DOS): A histogram of the number of available electronic states at each energy level. The total DOS provides similar information to the band structure.
• Projected DOS (PDOS): Decomposes the total DOS into contributions from specific atoms and orbitals (s, p, d, f). This is extremely useful for understanding chemical bonding and the character of states near the Fermi level.