| 1. |
- Adamovic, Dragan, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Kinetic pathways leading to layer-by-layer growth from hyperthermal atoms : A Multibillion time step molecular dynamics study
- 2007
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - : American Physical Society. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 76, s. 115418-115425
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We employ multibillion time step embedded-atom molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the homoepitaxial growth of Pt(111) from hyperthermal Pt atoms (EPt=0.2–50eV) using deposition fluxes approaching experimental conditions. Calculated antiphase diffraction intensity oscillations, based on adatom coverages as a function of time, reveal a transition from a three-dimensional multilayer growth mode with EPt<20eV to a layer-by-layer growth with EPt≥20eV. We isolate the effects of irradiation-induced processes and thermally activated mass transport during deposition in order to identify the mechanisms responsible for promoting layer-by-layer growth. Direct evidence is provided to show that the observed transition in growth modes is primarily due to irradiation-induced processes which occur during the 10ps following the arrival of each hyperthermal atom. The kinetic pathways leading to the transition involve both enhanced intralayer and interlayer adatom transport, direct incorporation of energetic atoms into clusters, and cluster disruption leading to increased terrace supersaturation.
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| 2. |
- Alling, Björn, 1980-, et al.
(författare)
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A unified cluster expansion method applied to the configurational thermodynamics of cubic TiAlN
- 2011
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - : American Physical Society. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 83:10, s. 104203-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use a study of the cubic Ti1−xAlxN system to illustrate a practical way of combining the major methodologies within alloy theory, the Connolly-Williams cluster expansion and the generalized perturbation method, in order to solve difficult alloy problems. The configurational, concentration dependent, Hamiltonian is separated into a fixed-lattice and a local lattice relaxation part. The effective cluster interactions of the first part is obtained primarily with a GPM-based approach while the later is obtained using cluster expansion. In our case the impact on the isostructural phase diagram of considering short range clustering beyond the mean field approximation, obtained from the mixing enthalpy and entropy of the random alloy, is rather small, especially in the composition region x ≤ 0.66, within reach of thin film growth techniques.
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| 3. |
- Alling, Björn, et al.
(författare)
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Configurational disorder effects on adatom mobilities on Ti1-xAlxN(001) surfaces from first principles
- 2012
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - : american physical society. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 85:24, s. 245422-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use metastable NaCl-structure Ti0.5Al0.5N alloys to probe effects of configurational disorder on adatom surface diffusion dynamics which control phase stability and nanostructural evolution during film growth. First-principles calculations were employed to obtain energy potential maps of Ti and Al adsorption on an ordered TiN(001) reference surface and a disordered Ti0.5Al0.5N(001) solid-solution surface. The energetics of adatom migration on these surfaces are determined and compared to isolate effects of configurational disorder. The results show that alloy surface disorder dramatically reduces Ti adatom mobilities. Al adatoms, in sharp contrast, experience only small disorder-induced differences in migration dynamics.
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| 4. |
- Alling, Björn, et al.
(författare)
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Dynamic and structural stability of cubic vanadium nitride
- 2015
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - : American Physical Society. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X .- 2469-9950 .- 2469-9969. ; 91:5, s. 054101-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Structural phase transitions in epitaxial stoichiometric VN/MgO(011) thin films are investigated using temperature-dependent synchrotron x-ray diffraction (XRD), selected-area electron diffraction (SAED), resistivity measurements, high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy, and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD). At room temperature, VN has the B1 NaCl structure. However, below T-c = 250 K, XRD and SAED results reveal forbidden (00l) reflections of mixed parity associated with a noncentrosymmetric tetragonal structure. The intensities of the forbidden reflections increase with decreasing temperature following the scaling behavior I proportional to (T-c - T)(1/2). Resistivity measurements between 300 and 4 K consist of two linear regimes resulting from different electron/phonon coupling strengths in the cubic and tetragonal-VN phases. The VN transport Eliashberg spectral function alpha F-2(tr)(h omega), the product of the phonon density of states F(h omega) and the transport electron/phonon coupling strength alpha(2)(tr)(h omega), is determined and used in combination with AIMD renormalized phonon dispersion relations to show that anharmonic vibrations stabilize the NaCl structure at T greater than T-c. Free-energy contributions due to vibrational entropy, often neglected in theoretical modeling, are essential for understanding the room-temperature stability of NaCl-structure VN, and of strongly anharmonic systems in general.
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| 5. |
- Alling, Björn, et al.
(författare)
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Metastability of fcc-related Si-N phases
- 2008
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 78:13, s. 132103-132103
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The phenomenon of superhardening in TiN/SiNx nanocomposites and the prediction of extreme hardness in bulk gamma-Si3N4 have attracted a large interest to this material system. Attempts to explain the experimental findings by means of first-principles calculations have so far been limited to static calculations. The dynamical stability of suggested structures of the SiNx tissue phase critical for the understanding of the nanocomposites is thus unknown. Here, we present a theoretical study of the phonon-dispersion relations of B1 and B3 SiN. We show that both phases previously considered as metastable are dynamically unstable. Instead, two pseudo-B3 Si3N4 phases derived from a L1(2)- or D0(22)-type distribution of Si vacancies are dynamically stable and might explain recent experimental findings of epitaxial SiNx in TiN/SiNx multilayers.
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| 6. |
- Alling, Björn, 1980-, et al.
(författare)
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Mixing and decomposition thermodynamics of c-Ti1-xAlxN from first-principles calculations
- 2007
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 75:045123
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wedescribe an efficient first-principles method that can be used tocalculate mixing enthalpies of transition metal nitrides with B1 structureand substitutional disorder at the metal sublattice. The technique isbased on the density functional theory. The independent sublattice modelis suggested for the treatment of disorder-induced local lattice relaxationeffects. It supplements the description of the substitutional disorder withinthe coherent potential approximation. We demonstrate the excellent accuracy ofthe method by comparison with calculations performed by means ofthe projector augumented wave method on supercells constructed as specialquasirandom structures. At the same time, the efficiency of thetechnique allows for total energy calculations on a very finemesh of concentrations which enables a reliable calculation of thesecond concentration derivative of the alloy total energy. This isa first step towards first-principles predictions of concentrations and temperatureintervals where the alloy decomposition proceeds via the spinodal mechanism.We thus calculate electronic structure, lattice parameter, and mixing enthalpiesof the quasibinary alloy c-Ti1−xAlxN. The lattice parameter follows Vegard'slaw at low fractions of AlN but deviates increasingly withincreasing Al content. We show that the asymmetry of themixing enthalpy and its second concentration derivative is associated withsubstantial variations of the electronic structure with alloy composition. Thephase diagram is constructed within the mean-field approximation.
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| 7. |
- Eklund, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Photoemission studies of Ti3SiC2 and nanocrystalline-TiC/amorphous-SiC nanocomposite thin films
- 2006
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 74:4, s. 045417-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photoemissionstudies using synchrotron radiation have been performed on epitaxial Ti3SiC2(0001)and compound nanocrystalline (nc-)TiC/amorphous (a-)SiC thin films deposited by magnetronsputtering. As-introduced samples were found to be covered by surfaceoxides, SiOx and TiOx. These oxides could be removed byin-situ annealing to ~1000 °C. For as-annealed Ti3SiC2(0001), surface Si wasobserved and interpreted as originating from decomposition of Ti3SiC2 throughSi out-diffusion. For nc-TiC/a-SiC annealed in situ to ~1000 °C, thesurface instead exhibited a dominant contribution from graphitic carbon, alsowith the presence of Si, due to C and Siout-diffusion from the a-SiC compound or from grain boundaries.
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| 8. |
- Ektarawong, Annop, et al.
(författare)
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Configurational order-disorder induced metal-nonmetal transition in B13C2 studied with first-principles superatom-special quasirandom structure method
- 2015
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - : American Physical Society. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 92:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Due to a large discrepancy between theory and experiment, the electronic character of crystalline boron carbide B13C2 has been a controversial topic in the field of icosahedral boron-rich solids. We demonstrate that this discrepancy is removed when configurational disorder is accurately considered in the theoretical calculations. We find that while the ordered ground state B13C2 is metallic, the configurationally disordered B13C2, modeled with a superatom-special quasirandom structure method, goes through a metal to nonmetal transition as the degree of disorder is increased with increasing temperature. Specifically, one of the chain-end carbon atoms in the CBC chains substitutes a neighboring equatorial boron atom in a B-12 icosahedron bonded to it, giving rise to a B11Ce(BBC) unit. The atomic configuration of the substitutionally disordered B13C2 thus tends to be dominated by a mixture between B-12(CBC) and B11Ce(BBC). Due to splitting of valence states in B11Ce(BBC), the electron deficiency in B-12(CBC) is gradually compensated.
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| 9. |
- Ektarawong, Annop, et al.
(författare)
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First-principles study of configurational disorder in B4C using a superatom-special quasirandom structure method
- 2014
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - : American Physical Society. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 90:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Configurationally disordered crystalline boron carbide, with the composition B4C, is studied using first-principles calculations. We investigate both dilute and high concentrations of carbon-boron substitutional defects. For the latter purpose, we suggest a superatoms picture of the complex structure and combine it with a special quasirandom structure approach for disorder. In this way, we model a random distribution of high concentrations of the identified low-energy defects: (1) bipolar defects and (2) rotation of icosahedral carbon among the three polar-up sites. Additionally, the substitutional disorder of the icosahedral carbon at all six polar sites, as previously discussed in the literature, is also considered. Two configurational phase transitions from the ordered to the disordered configurations are predicted to take place upon an increase in temperature using a mean-field approximation for the entropy. The first transition, at 870 K, induces substitutional disorder of the icosahedral carbon atoms among the three polar-up sites; meanwhile the second transition, at 2325 K, reveals the random substitution of the icosahedral carbon atoms at all six polar sites coexisting with bipolar defects. Already the first transition removes the monoclinic distortion existing in the ordered ground-state configuration and restore the rhombohedral system (R3m). The restoration of inversion symmetry yielding the full rhombohedral symmetry (R (3) over barm) on average, corresponding to what is reported in the literature, is achieved after the second transition. Investigating the effects of high pressure on the configurational stability of the disordered B4C phases reveals a tendency to stabilize the ordered ground-state configuration as the configurationally ordering/disordering transition temperature increases with pressure exerted on B4C. The electronic density of states, obtained from the disordered phases, indicates a sensitivity of the band gap to the degree of configurational disorder in B4C.
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| 10. |
- Fang, C.M., et al.
(författare)
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General trend of the mechanical properties of the ternary carbides M3SiC2 (M=transition metal)
- 2006
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 74:5, s. 054106-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present results from first-principles calculations of ternary transition metal carbides in the M3SiC2 series (where M=early transition metal). We predict structural and mechanical properties of these new MN+1AXN phases. The bulk modulus of the ternary carbides, M3SiC2, are in the calculations found to be proportional to the bulk modulus of the corresponding binary carbides, MC. We have analyzed this behavior using a simple, nearest-neighbor bond model, as well as from first-principles total energy calculations and have found that it is caused by a considerably weaker M-Si bond compared to the M-C bond.
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