Showing papers by "Fernando Flores published in 2007"

Energy level alignment at metal/organic semiconductor interfaces: “Pillow” effect, induced density of interface states, and charge neutrality level

Abstract: A unified model, embodying the "pillow" effect and the induced density of interface states (IDIS) model, is presented for describing the level alignment at a metal/organic interface. The pillow effect, which originates from the orthogonalization of the metal and organic wave functions, is calculated using a many-body linear combination of atomic orbitals Hamiltonian, whereby electron long-range interactions are obtained using an expansion in the metal/organic wave function overlap, while the electronic charge of both materials remains unchanged. This approach yields the pillow dipole and represents the first effect induced by the metal/organic interaction, resulting in a reduction of the metal work function. In a second step, we consider how charge is transferred between the metal and the organic material by means of the IDIS model: Charge transfer is determined by the relative position of the metal work function (corrected by the pillow effect) and the organic charge neutrality level, as well as by an interface parameter S, which measures how this potential difference is screened. In our approach, we show that the combined IDIS-pillow effects can be described in terms of the original IDIS alignment corrected by a screened pillow dipole. For the organic materials considered in this paper, we see that the IDIS dipole already represents most of the realignment induced at the metal/organic interface. We therefore conclude that the pillow effect yields minor corrections to the IDIS model.

Controlled Self-Organization of Atom Vacancies in Monatomic Gallium Layers

Abstract: Ga adsorption on the Si(112) surface results in the formation of pseudomorphic Ga atom chains. Compressive strain in these atom chains is relieved via creation of adatom vacancies and their self-organization into meandering vacancy lines. The average spacing between these line defects can be controlled, within limits, by adjusting the chemical potential $\ensuremath{\mu}$ of the Ga adatoms. We derive a lattice model that quantitatively connects density functional theory (DFT) calculations for perfectly ordered structures with the fluctuating disorder seen in experiment and the experimental control parameter $\ensuremath{\mu}$. This hybrid approach of lattice modeling and DFT can be applied to other examples of line defects in heteroepitaxy.