Electronic Structure Of Disordered Alloys Surfaces And Interfaces

At present, there is an increasing interest in the prediction of properties of classical and new materials such as substitutional alloys, their surfaces, and metallic or semiconductor multilayers. A detailed understanding based on a thus of the utmost importance for fu microscopic, parameter-free approach is ture developments in solid state physics and materials science. The interrela tion between electronic and structural properties at surfaces plays a key role for a microscopic understanding of phenomena as diverse as catalysis, corrosion, chemisorption and crystal growth. Remarkable progress has been made in the past 10-15 years in the understand ing of behavior of ideal crystals and their surfaces by relating their properties to the underlying electronic structure as determined from the first principles. Similar studies of complex systems like imperfect surfaces, interfaces, and mul tilayered structures seem to be accessible by now. Conventional band-structure methods, however, are of limited use because they require an excessive number of atoms per elementary cell, and are not able to account fully for e.g. substitu tional disorder and the true semiinfinite geometry of surfaces. Such problems can be solved more appropriately by Green function techniques and multiple scattering formalism.

Developments in the density functional theory and the methods of electronic structure calculations have made it possible to carry out ab-initio studies of a variety of materials efficiently and at a predictable level. This book covers many of those state-of-the-art developments and their applications to ordered and disordered materials, surfaces and interfaces and clusters, etc.

Understanding the electronic structure of solids is a basic part of theoretical investigation in physics. Application of investigative techniques requires the solid under investigation to be "periodic." However, this is not always the case. This volume addresses three classes of "non-periodic" solids currently undergoing the most study: alloys, surfaces and clusters. Understanding the electronic structure of these systems is fundamental not only for the basic science, but also constitutes a very important step in various technological aspects, such as tuning their stabilities, chemical and catalytic reactivities and magnetism. Expert practitioners give an up-to-date account of the field with enough detailed background so that even a newcomer can follow the development. The theoretical framework is discussed in addition to the present status of knowledge in the field. Electronic Structure of Alloys, Surfaces and Clusters also includes an extensive bibliography which provides a comprehensive reading list of work on the topic.

A very comprehensive book, enabling the reader to understand the basic formalisms used in electronic structure determination and particularly the "Muffin Tin Orbitals" methods. The latest developments are presented, providing a very detailed description of the "Full Potential" schemes. This book will provide a real state of the art, since almost all of the contributions on formalism have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere. This book will become a standard reference volume. Moreover, applications in very active fields of today's research on magnetism are presented. A wide spectrum of such questions is covered by this book. For instance, the paper on interlayer exchange coupling should become a "classic", since there has been fantastic experimental activity for 10 years and this can be considered to be the "final" theoretical answer to this question. This work has never been presented in such a complete form.

This monograph reviews the subject of structural disorder in alloys and describes how structural information can be exploited to build sound theoretical descriptions in terms of modified Ising models. Scattering with thermal neutrons and x-rays prove to be complementary approaches to measure the weak diffuse scattering which provides detailed information about the disorder. The authors show how Monte Carlo methods are applied to determine the most realistic effective interactions among the alloying atoms. These results can be used as a benchmark for modern electronic structure calculations. Of more general interest, the limitations of scattering experiments in a determination of an interaction model, and thus also of the structure itself are discussed. Finally, simulations exhibit not only near-surface disordering due to frustration effects but also new possible surface - induced ordering phenomena. Accurate Monte Carlo simulations are used to test existing theories of wetting.