Adhesion of transition metals: energies and thin film deposition: An electronic approach

F. GAUTIER; ANA MARIA LLOIS

SURFACE SCIENCE

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 1991 vol. 245 p. 191 - 206

0039-6028

<!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> The electronic contribution to the interface energy of two transition metals has been calculated within the tight-binding approximation in order to obtain general trends in the adhesion energies of these metals. ?AB, the metal-metal interface energy, which enters both in the expression for the adhesion energy and the spreading coefficient has been related to the cohesive energies, position of Fermi d-levels and variations at the interface of the bandwidths of the local densities of states. The Allan-Lannoo-Dobrzynski model is used and extended to take into account the volume variation of the bandwidths and energy levels. Local densities of states are calculated using either the recursion method or rectangular shapes. The predicted trends for ?AB have been compared with the chemical contribution deduced by Miedema et al. The variation of the interfacial energy with the number of layers deposited on a substrates has been also studied. The wetting phenomena and the film morphology (Volmer-Weber, Stranski-Krastanov, Frank-van der Merwe growths) have been deduced from the electronic structure for three typical situations corresponding to the Rh/V, Ni/Mo and Nb/Ta combinations.