Tutorial: Plotting spin-polarized electronic band structures #
This tutorial shows a practical workflow for plotting and styling spin-resolved projected bands.
Upload the electronic band structure files #
The first step is to upload the required files from your DFT simulation.
The upload panel indicates which files can be provided.
Not all files are mandatory; however, the file that contains the band information
is essential (for example, PROCAR is required for a VASP simulation).
In this section, you are also asked to provide the Fermi energy. If the Fermi energy
is given, the plot will automatically shift the energies so that the Fermi level is set to zero.
After selecting the files you can proceed by clicking on the Parse button.
Review generated EBS report cards #
After parsing, the page generates report cards that summarize key results. You can expect values such as bandgap, material type, Fermi value, lattice parameters, angles, volume, and density. If the simulation is spin-polarized and the bandgaps differ between channels, the reports include values for each spin channel.
If you want this report in different units, use the Units panel in the right sidebar.
Step 2: Limits #
Limits
After plotting your baseline spin-polarized figure, refine the visible window from Limits in the right sidebar.
In this example, we use y-limits from -9 eV to 10 eV. For x-limits, we use integer high-symmetry-point indices to show bands between the 0th and 5th high-symmetry points in the k-path.
Navigation
Use the zoom sliders to focus on specific energy and k-point ranges. Drag slider handles to zoom in or out, and move the selected window to inspect different parts of the band structure.
Step 3: Configure spin-resolved controls in General Options #
For this tutorial we use spin-polarized CaFeO3 data. When the uploaded calculation is spin-polarized, the General Options panel automatically duplicates both Line/Marker and Legend Label settings into separate tiles for Spin Up and Spin Down.
In this example, we keep the defaults: a solid black line for spin up and a dashed red line for spin down. You can tune each spin channel independently, including Opacity and Plot Order, to control overlap and rendering priority. Plot Order controls drawing stack priority: traces with higher order are rendered on top of lower-order traces. This is especially useful when spin-up and spin-down bands overlap, because you can choose which channel stays visible in the foreground.
Legend labels are auto-generated by default, but you can override them per spin channel in the Legend Label tiles. The same tiles let you customize legend text Color, Weight, and Style.
During analysis, you can hide or unhide individual spin channels by clicking their items in the legend.
Step 4: Configure the Legend panel #
Use the Legend panel in the right sidebar to style how the legend box appears on the figure. In this example, we enable BG and choose a gray shade for the legend background.
We also enable Border and set Radius to 2 to create a subtle rounded legend frame.
Step 5: Customization and styling #
For axis, legend, font, colors, and other appearance controls, use the right sidebar and see the full settings reference in Plot Settings.
Step 6: Export the figure #
When your figure is ready, click the download button in the chart toolbar to export it. Use this to save a clean image for reports, slides, or publications.
