A theoretical investigation of adsorbate-induced surface relaxation effects using cluster models: Al on Si(111)
Authors:
Visvaldas Kairys and John D. Head
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry, University of Hawaii, 2545 The Mall, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Abstract:
Differently sized cluster calculations are used to investigate theoretically the preferred adsorption site for an Al adatom on the Si(111) surface. By performing partial geometry optimizations at the Hartree-Fock level on AlSin subclusters around the site of interest we find significant Al adatom-induced surface relaxation effects distorting the Si atoms from their bulk lattice positions. The largest relaxation effects take place at the T4 site resulting in Al adsorption at the T4 site to be 5 kcal/mol more stable than at the H3 site and considerably more stable than adsorption at the T1 site. However, we only have confidence in this result after performing for the T4 site a partial geometry optimization on the AlSi5 subcluster in the AlSi26H24 cluster and by including appropriate correlation corrections.