Polar effects at solid/liquid interfaces

Atomic-scale compensation phenomena at polar interfaces.

The interfacial screening charge that arises to compensate electric fields of dielectric or ferroelectric thin films is now recognized as the most important factor in determining the capacitance or polarization of ultrathin ferroelectrics. Here we investigate using aberration-corrected electron microscopy and density-functional theory to show how interfaces cope with the need to terminate ferro...

Evolution of the band alignment at polar oxide interfaces

OFFSETS AND POLARIZATION AT STRAINED AlN/GaN POLAR INTERFACES

The strain induced by lattice mismatch at the interface is responsible for the different value of the band discontinuities observed recently for the AlN/GaN (AlN on GaN) and the GaN/AlN (GaN on AlN) polar (0001) interface. We present a first-principles calculation of valence band offsets, interface dipoles, strain-induced piezoelectric fields, relaxed geometric structure, and formation energies...

Dynamics of electron transfer at polar molecule-metal interfaces: The role of thermally activated tunnelling Short Title: Dynamics of electron transfer at polar molecule-metal interfaces

Heterogeneous electron transfer across interfaces is frequently discussed on the basis of Marcus Theory taking into account rearrangements of the solvent along a nuclear coordinate q. The electron transfer process itself occurs via tunnelling through a barrier normal to the interface. The key point is not whether tunnelling occurs, but whether thermally activated solvent fluctuations initiate t...

Many body effects at surfaces and interfaces

The past two decades have experienced the development of angle-resolved photoemission to the point that it can now provide crucial information on an energy scale that is relevant to many key problems in condensed matter physics. At the same time, our ability to prepare and characterize surfaces, interfaces, and thin films has improved to the extent that many exotic phases can be produced with a...