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Effects of atomic scale roughness at metal/insulator interfaces on metal work function

Ling, S; Watkins, MB; Shluger, AL; (2013) Effects of atomic scale roughness at metal/insulator interfaces on metal work function. PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY CHEMICAL PHYSICS , 15 (45) 19615 - 19624. 10.1039/c3cp53590h. Green open access

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Abstract

We evaluate the performance of different van der Waals (vdW) corrected density functional theory (DFT) methods in predicting the structure of perfect interfaces between the LiF(001), MgO(001), NiO(001) films on the Ag(001) surface and the resulting work function shift of Ag(001). The results demonstrate that including the van der Waals interaction is important for obtaining accurate interface structures and the metal work function shift. The work function shift results from a subtle interplay of several effects strongly affected by even small changes in the interface geometry. This makes the accuracy of theoretical methods insufficient for predicting the shift values better than within 0.2 eV. Most of the existing van der Waals corrected functionals are not particularly suited for studying metal/insulator interfaces. The lack of accurate experimental data on the interface geometries and surface rumpling of insulators hampers the calibration of existing and novel density functionals.

Type: Article
Title: Effects of atomic scale roughness at metal/insulator interfaces on metal work function
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1039/c3cp53590h
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c3cp53590h
Additional information: © the Owner Societies 2013. This Open Access Article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. PubMed ID: 24131905
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1417865
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