Study of some surface properties using a simple gradient expansion of the kinetic energy density functional

Summary Reasonable surface energies and very accurate surface dipole barrier and work function for a semi-infinite jellium are calculated from a simple model of the density. The model was proposed by Smith and contains one universal parameter. In the Kohn-Sham energy functional, the kinetic energy is approximated by its simple gradient expansion including a fourth-order term. The exchange and correlation are treated within the local-density approximation. Using the simple gradient, the energy is minimized with respect to the universal parameter of the density. The parameter which minimizes the energy is used to calculate the surface dipole barrier and the work function. A comparison was made with the Lang and Kohn results and with the Ma and Sahni results.