A first-principles study of the effect of local environment on the electronic structure of random face-centered cubic Ag-Pd and Cu-Pd alloys is presented. The core-level shift for each atom in the equiatomic alloys is calculated and compared to experimental data. It is shown how the initial-state and final-state distributions contribute to the total broadening. We find that the initial-state and the final-state contributions together increase the broadening for the investigated core levels in Cu and Ag, whereas they cancel each other to a large degree for Pd. We also demonstrated how local lattice relaxations influence the binding energy shift. We find that relaxation does not influence the average shift, though it is able to affect the broadening of the simulated x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectra. © 2005 The American Physical Society.

This book is published in honor of the 2005 Hume-Rothery Award Recipient, Uichiro Mizutani. It emphasizes both theoretical and experimental aspects of electronic, structural, and thermodynamic properties of complex alloy phases. Leading experts provide an assessment of our current understanding of the structural properties of complex materials, including quasicrystalline and amorphous alloys. Special emphasis is placed on our understanding of why nature is able to stabilize complex atomic arrangements and on recent results related to structurally complex alloy phases. These topics, in the spirit of the work carried out by U. Mizutani, constitute the main theme of the book

We show that core-level binding energy shifts (CLS) can be reliably calculated within density functional theory. The scheme includes both the initial (electron energy eigenvalue) as well as final state (relaxation due to core-hole screening) effects in the same framework. The results include CLS as a function of composition in substitutional random bulk and surface alloys. Sensitivity of the CLS to the local chemical environment in the bulk and at the surface is demonstrated. A possibility to use the CLS for structural determination is discussed. Finally, an extension of the model is made for Auger kinetic energy shift calculations.

Disorder broadening of core-level binding energies is a general effect observed in random alloys, and identifies an opportunity for studying specific local environments experimentally. Here we study it in an archetypical system: face-centered-cubic Cu50Au50. While the disorder broadening is clearly detectable at Au, at Cu it is below the detection limit. We supplement experiments by a theoretical study where we model the alloy by a large supercell constructed as a special quasirandom structure and calculate binding-energy shifts at all sites in the supercell. Theory shows that the suppression of the disorder broadening at Cu results from a delicate balance between the influence of local chemical environment and inhomogeneous lattice distortions on the site-resolved core-level shifts. Surprisingly, even larger relaxation-induced shifts are observed at Au sites.

We present a brief overview of recent theoretical studies of the core-level binding energy shift (CLS) in solid metallic materials. The focus is on first principles calculations using the complete screening picture, which incorporates the initial (ground state) and final (core-ionized) state contributions of the electron photoemission process in X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), all within density functional theory (DFT). Considering substitutionally disordered binary alloys, we demonstrate that on the one hand CLS depend on average conditions, such as volume and overall composition, while on the other hand they are sensitive to the specific local atomic environment. The possibility of employing layer resolved shifts as a tool for characterizing interface quality in fully embedded thin films is also discussed, with examples for CuNi systems. An extension of the complete screening picture to core-core-core Auger transitions is given, and new results for the influence of local environment effects on Auger kinetic energy shifts in fcc AgPd are presented.

We study influence of the local chemical environment, the so-called local environment effects, on the electronic structure and properties of magnetic systems with reduced dimensionality and chemical disorder, and show that they play a crucial role in a vicinity of magnetic instability. As a model, we consider Fe–Ni Invar. We present results obtained from ab initio calculations of the electronic structure, magnetic moments, and exchange interactions in random fcc Fe–Ni alloy, for a single monolayer alloy film on a Cu (0 0 1) substrate as well as in the bulk. We analyze the difference between the film and the bulk magnetization, which is found to be most pronounced for dilute alloys. We also analyze a sensitivity of the individual magnetic moments and effective exchange parameters to the local chemical environment of the atoms.

We study the structural properties of ultrathin Ag_xPd_1−x films on top of a Ru(0001) substrate. Effective interatomic interactions, obtained from first-principles calculations, have been used in Monte Carlo simulations to derive the distribution of the alloy components in a four-monolayer (4-ML) Ag-Pd film. Though Ag-Pd alloys show complete solubility in the bulk, the thin film geometry leads to a pronounced segregation between Ag and Pd atoms with a strong preference of Ag atoms toward the surface and Pd atoms toward the interface. The theoretical prediction of this double-segregation effect is strongly supported by photoelectron spectroscopy experiments carried out for 4-ML thin films. We also show, in an additional experiment, that even in the case where initially 1 ML Ag is buried under 6 ML Pd, the whole Ag ML segregates to the surface.

The dynamical and thermodynamic stability of a single monolayer of SiNx sandwiched isostructurally between B1-TiN(001) and (111) oriented slabs are investigated by means of density functional theory. Possible dynamical stabilization of the (001) interface, by distortion of the Si-N bonds, is considered and found to almost, but not completely, remove the phonon instabilities. The (111) interface on the other hand is found to be dynamically stable. We furthermore relax the stoichiometry degree of freedom by allowing for Si vacancies in the lattice and show that the ideal 1:1 SiN stoichiometry in both interfaces are thermodynamically unstable with respect to Si vacancy formation regardless if the system is grown under nitrogen-rich or nitrogen-poor conditions, and therefore ruling out its relevance for performance of real materials.