Understanding adhesion at as-deposited interfaces from ab initio thermodynamics of deposition growth: thin-film alumina on titanium carbide

We investigate the chemical composition and adhesion of chemical vapour deposited thin-film alumina on TiC using and extending a recently proposed nonequilibrium method of ab initio thermodynamics of deposition growth (AIT-DG) [Rohrer J and Hyldgaard P 2010 Phys. Rev. B 82 045415]. A previous study of this system [Rohrer J, Ruberto C and Hyldgaard P 2010 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 22 015004] found that use of equilibrium thermodynamics leads to predictions of a non-binding TiC/alumina interface, despite the industrial use as a wear-resistant coating. This discrepancy between equilibrium theory and experiment is resolved by the AIT-DG method which predicts interfaces with strong adhesion. The AIT-DG method combines density functional theory calculations, rate-equation modelling of the pressure evolution of the deposition environment and thermochemical data. The AIT-DG method was previously used to predict prevalent terminations of growing or as-deposited surfaces of binary materials. Here we extent the method to predict surface and interface compositions of growing or as-deposited thin films on a substrate and find that inclusion of the nonequilibrium deposition environment has important implications for the nature of buried interfaces.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Trends in Metal Oxide Stability for Nanorods, Nanotubes, and Surfaces

The formation energies of nanostructures play an important role in determining their properties, including the catalytic activity. For the case of 15 different rutile and 8 different perovskite metal oxides, we find that the density functional theory (DFT) calculated formation energies of (2,2) nanorods, (3,3) nanotubes, and the (110) and (100) surfaces may be described semi-quantitatively by the fraction of metal--oxygen bonds broken and the bonding band centers in the bulk metal oxide

On the behavior of Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi relations for transition metal oxides

Versatile Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi (BEP) relations are found from density functional theory for a wide range of transition metal oxides including rutiles and perovskites. For oxides, the relation depends on the type of oxide, the active site and the dissociating molecule. The slope of the BEP relation is strongly coupled to the adsorbate geometry in the transition state. If it is final state-like the dissociative chemisorption energy can be considered as a descriptor for the dissociation. If it is initial state-like, on the other hand, the dissociative chemisorption energy is not suitable as descriptor for the dissociation. Dissociation of molecules with strong intramolecular bonds belong to the former and molecules with weak intramolecular bonds to the latter group. We show, for the prototype system La-perovskites, that there is a "cyclic" behavior in the transition state characteristics upon change of the active transition metal of the oxide