No Arabic abstract
The alignment of the frontier orbital energies of an adsorbed molecule with the substrate Fermi level at metal-organic interfaces is a fundamental observable of significant practical importance in nanoscience and beyond. Typical density functional theory calculations, especially those using local and semi-local functionals, often underestimate level alignment leading to inaccurate electronic structure and charge transport properties. In this work, we develop a new fully self-consistent predictive scheme to accurately compute level alignment at certain classes of complex heterogeneous molecule-metal interfaces based on optimally-tuned range-separated hybrid functionals. Starting from a highly accurate description of the gas-phase electronic structure, our method by construction captures important nonlocal surface polarization effects via tuning of the long-range screened exchange in a range-separated hybrid in a non-empirical and system-specific manner. We implement this functional in a plane-wave code and apply it to several physisorbed and chemisorbed molecule-metal interface systems. Our results are in quantitative agreement with experiments, both the level alignment and work function changes. Our approach constitutes a new practical scheme for accurate and efficient calculations of the electronic structure of molecule-metal interfaces.
Using photoemission spectroscopy, we determine the relationship between electronic energy level alignment at a metal-molecule interface and single-molecule junction transport data. We measure the position of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) relative to the Au metal Fermi level for three 1,4-benzenediamine derivatives on Au(111) and Au(110) with ultraviolet and resonant x-ray photoemission spectroscopy. We compare these results to scanning tunnelling microscope based break-junction measurements of single molecule conductance and to first-principles calculations. We find that the energy difference between the HOMO and Fermi level for the three molecules adsorbed on Au(111) correlate well with changes in conductance, and agree well with quasiparticle energies computed from first-principles calculations incorporating self-energy corrections. On the Au(110) which present Au atoms with lower-coordination, critical in break-junction conductance measurements, we see that the HOMO level shifts further from the Fermi level. These results provide the first direct comparison of spectroscopic energy level alignment measurements with single molecule junction transport data.
Recently, phosphorene electronic and optoelectronic prototype devices have been fabricated with various metal electrodes. We systematically explore for the first time the contact properties of monolayer (ML) phosphorene with a series of commonly used metals (Al, Ag. Cu, Au, Cr, Ni, Ti, and Pd) via both ab initio electronic structure calculations and more reliable quantum transport simulations. Strong interactions are found between all the checked metals, with the energy band structure of ML phosphorene destroyed. In terms of the quantum transport simulations, ML phosphorene forms a n-type Schottky contact with Au, Cu, Cr, Al, and Ag electrodes, with electron Schottky barrier heights (SBHs) of 0.30, 0.34, 0.37, 0.51, and 0.52 eV, respectively, and p-type Schottky contact with Ti, Ni, and Pd electrodes, with hole SBHs of 0.30, 0.26, and 0.16 eV, respectively. These results are in good agreement with available experimental data. Our findings not only provide an insight into the ML phosphorene-metal interfaces but also help in ML phosphorene based device design.
The physical origin of Fermi level pinning (FLP) at metal/Ge interfaces has been argued over a long period. Using the Fe$_{3}$Si/Ge(111) heterostructure developed originally, we can explore electrical transport properties through atomically matched metal/Ge junctions. Unlike the conventional metal/$p$-Ge junctions reported so far, we clearly observe rectifying current-voltage characteristics with a measurable Schottky barrier height, depending on the contact area of the Fe$_{3}$Si/Ge(111) junction. These results indicate that one should distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms for discussing the formation of the Schottky barrier at metal/Ge interfaces. This study will be developed for understanding FLP for almost all the metal/semiconductor interfaces.
Thermal transport properties at the metal/MoS2 interfaces are analyzed by using an atomistic phonon transport model based on the Landauer formalism and first-principles calculations. The considered structures include chemisorbed Sc(0001)/MoS2 and Ru(0001)/MoS2, physisorbed Au(111)/MoS2, as well as Pd(111)/MoS2 with intermediate characteristics. Calculated results illustrate a distinctive dependence of thermal transfer on the details of interfacial microstructures. More specifically, the chemisorbed case with a stronger bonding exhibits a generally smaller interfacial thermal resistance than the physisorbed. Comparison between metal/MoS2 and metal/graphene systems suggests that metal/MoS2 is significantly more resistive. Further examination of lattice dynamics identifies the presence of multiple distinct atomic planes and bonding patterns at the interface as the key origin of the observed large thermal resistance.
We report a systematic study on Edelstein magnetoresistance (Edelstein MR) in Co25Fe75/Cu/Bi2O3 heterostructures with a strong spin-orbit interaction at the Cu/Bi2O3 interface. We succeed in observing a significant dependence of the Edelstein MR on both Cu layer thickness and temperature, and also develop a general analytical model considering distinct bulk and interface contributions on spin relaxation. Our analysis, based on the above model, quantitatively illustrates a unique property of the spin transport near the Rashba interface, revealing a prominent role of the spin relaxation process by determining the ratios of the spin relaxation inside and outside the interface. We further find the characteristic spin transport is unaffected by temperature. Our results provide an essential tool for exploring the transport in a system with spin-momentum-locked two-dimensional states.