Quantum Theory of Advanced Materials

We have studied the structural stability of thin silver films with thicknesses of N = 1 to 15 monolayers, deposited on an Fe(100) substrate. Photoemission spectroscopy results show that films of N = 1, 2, and 5 monolayer thicknesses are structurally stable for temperatures above 800 kelvin, whereas films of other thicknesses are unstable and bifurcate into a film with N +/- 1 monolayer thicknesses at temperatures around 400 kelvin, The results are in agreement with theoretical predictions that consider the electronic energy of the quantum well associated with a particular film thickness as a significant contribution-to the film stability.

Angle-resolved photoemission has been utilized to study the surface electronic structure of 1/3 monolayer of Sn on Ge(lll) in both the room-temperature (root3 x root3)R30 degrees phase and the low-temperature (3 x 3) charge-density-wave phase. The results reveal a gap opening around the (3 x 3) Brillouin zone boundary, suggesting a Peierls-like transition despite the well-documented lack of Fermi nesting, a highly sensitive electronic response to doping by intrinsic surface defects is the cause for this unusual behavior, and a detailed calculation illustrates the origin of the (3 x 3) symmetry.

We present a tight-binding model for silicon which incorporates two-center intra-atomic parameters. The model is fitted to density-functional theory band structures for silicon in the diamond structure over a number of volumes. It is shown that with only a two-center, orthogonal basis, reasonable total energies can be obtained for many different structures. Thus it eliminates the need to use structure-dependent terms in the total-energy model.

Using tight-binding models, the energies of a number of silicon and germanium (111) surfaces are studied. These include reconstructed surfaces with dimers and stacking faults (DS), simple adatom surfaces such as 2x2 and c(2x8), and more complicated cases with dimers, adatoms, and stacking faults (DAS). For reconstructed surfaces containing adatoms, it is found that a simple correction term dependent on the adatom concentration is needed in the present total-energy model to account for the unusual geometry. Similarities between the silicon and germanium reconstructions are seen and compare well with ab initio results. There are also some differences between silicon and germanium, for example, the DS surfaces are lower in energy than the relaxed (1x1) for silicon, but higher for germanium. Si(111) reconstructs into the DAS structure while Ge(111) goes to the simple adatom c(2x8) surface. The c(2x8), 7x7 DAS, (1x1), and 7x7 DS surface reconstructions of Ge(111) were studied with in-plane strain. For these surfaces, a strain of about 2% was sufficient to make the 7x7 DAS/DS surface lower in energy than the c(2x8)/(1x1) surface. An analysis of the energy per atom showed that the dimer-row and associated first-layer atoms played a major part in the differing energy behavior, in agreement with an earlier proposal. An expansive strain was applied to the 2x2, 7x7 DAS, (1x1), and 7x7 DS surface reconstructions of Si(111). With a strain of about 2.5% the adatom surfaces switched relative energies, while the adatom free surfaces required only about 1.5% strain. As for germanium, the dimer-row and associated atoms were of major importance in the differing energy change.

By accurately fitting tight-binding parameters to ab initio band structures from 14 different tetrahedral volumes, tight-binding parametric formulas have been developed for silicon and germanium. The distance dependences for these orthogonal, nearest-neighbor parameters range from r-2.5 to r-3.3. Repulsive potentials are added in order to reproduce the total energies for a number of bulk structures. It is found that the repulsive potential needed has the simple form of a pairwise interaction multiplied by a structure-dependent constant. Transferability is shown with good bulk and cluster results.

We have performed tight-binding calculations on a model of an amorphous silicon sample generated previously by a molecular-dynamics simulation employing the Stillinger-Weber potential. The sample consists of 588 atoms and contains a high density of floating-bond defects. Two tight-binding calculations are presented, one using the widely accepted Chadi parameters, which include only nearest-neighbor interactions, and the other using the parameters recently proposed by Allen, Broughton, and McMahan (ABM) [Phys. Rev. B 34, 859 (1986)] for a nonorthogonal basis set. Comparison of the densities of states shows similar behavior in the valence band, but the electron density near a defect is less localized with the ABM parameters. It is also found that the projected density of states on the fivefold-coordinated atoms is very close to that on the fourfold-coordinated atoms, while the projected density of states on the threefold-coordinated atoms is distinctly different and has more states in the gap.