Campus Units
Materials Science and Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Ames Laboratory
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
12-15-2015
Journal or Book Title
Physical Review B
Volume
82
Issue
24
First Page
245405
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.92.245405
Abstract
Density functional theory is used to study structural energetics of Pb vacancy cluster formation on C60/Pb/Si(111) to explain the unusually fast and error-free transformations between the “Devil's Staircase” (DS) phases on the Pb/Si(111) wetting layer at low temperature (∼110K). The formation energies of vacancy clusters are calculated in C60/Pb/Si(111) as Pb atoms are progressively ejected from the initial dense Pb wetting layer. Vacancy clusters larger than five Pb atoms are found to be stable with seven being the most stable, while vacancy clusters smaller than five are highly unstable, which agrees well with the observed ejection rate of ∼5 Pb atoms per C60. The high energy cost (∼0.8 eV) for the small vacancy clusters to form indicates convincingly that the unusually fast transformation observed experimentally between the DS phases, upon C60 adsorption at low temperature, cannot be the result of single-atom random walk diffusion but of correlated multi-atom processes.
Copyright Owner
American Physical Society
Copyright Date
2015
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Wang, Lin-Lin; Johnson, Duane D.; and Tringides, Michael C., "C60-induced Devil's Staircase transformation on a Pb/Si(111) wetting layer" (2015). Ames Laboratory Publications. 399.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ameslab_pubs/399
Comments
This article is from Physical Review B 92 (2015): 245405, doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.92.245405. Posted with permission.