摘要

Possible adsorbate induced reconstruction effects of methanethiolate (MeS) and methaneselenolate (MeSe) on Au(111) are studied employing density functional theory (DFT). For the purposes of this study these simple alkanechalcogenates prove to be representative models for chalcogenate molecules with larger rest groups. MeS and MeSe show very similar properties regarding the adsorption at the unreconstructed and reconstructed surfaces. The latter are constructed by systematically introducing defects at various adsorbate coverages. It turns out that only if the defect site is occupied by at least two molecules the costs of creating the defect can be counterbalanced by the energetic gain and thus adsorbate induced reconstruction gets energetically feasible. Furthermore, for various molecular coverages the adatom-dichalcogenate model, as found by Maksymovych et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 (2006) 146103), is indeed the most stable reconstruction motif among the simple models studied herein. In order to mimic the impact of the environment, e.g. solvent effects, temperature or electric potentials, the stability of the reconstruction motifs was studied as a function of both the chemical potential of the adsorbate and the energy needed to create the defect substrate structure following the ansatz of ab initio atomistic thermodynamics. This approach hints at the fact that different reconstruction motifs can be realized in different chemical environments.

  • 出版日期2015-10