Study of Silicon-metal Interaction in Adsorption Process: An Ab-initio Approach

Abstract

Abstract:The formation of metal silicide plays important role in deciding the nature of the contact on silicon.Due to their chemically neautral nature,Au and Ag are used as contact metals in various devices.In particular the role of silicides is known to be crucial in defining the behavior of the electrical contact. The interaction of these metals with silicon at cluster level is still under the study.For naoscale devices, the nature at such interaction carries lot more inportance. Bulk Gold silicide(Cohesive energy ~ 3.81eV/atom) shows higher stability compared to silver silicide(Cohesive enrgy ~ 2.95 eV/atom). In the present work we show computational results based on Density Functional Theory(DFT) of Si cluster adsorption on Ag(111) surface and compare with the results of Si adsorption on Au(111). These results bring out the difference in Si cluster-metal surface interactions at the nanoscale. In particular the Si island-metal surface interaction shows island size dependence. We have presented results for most stable orientations only.