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The ZnO films, 25 nm thick were deposited by e-beam evaporation of ZnO (99.9%) pellets onto native oxide covered silicon (100) substrates. Details of the interface chemical composition and the chemical depth profile have been deduced as…
Ab initio calculations using the local spin density approximation and also including the Hubbard $U$ have been performed for three low energy configurations of the interface between LaAlO$_3$ and TiO$_2$-anatase. Two types of interfaces…
Improving reactivity on an insulating surface is crucial due to their important applications in surface catalytic reactions. In this work, we carried out first-principles calculations to investigate the adsorption of O2 on a single-layer…
The interaction of water with TiO2 is crucial to many of its practical applications, including photocatalytic water splitting. Following the first demonstration of this phenomenon 40 years ago there have been numerous studies of the rutile…
The relative importance of atomic defects and electron transfer in explaining conductivity at the crystalline LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface has been a topic of debate. Metallic interfaces with similar electronic properties produced by amorphous…
Under various conditions of the growth process, when the presumably unconventional superconductor Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ (SRO) contains micro-inclusions of Ru metal, the superconducting critical temperature increases significantly. An STEM study…
The interaction of tungsten hexacarbonyl W(CO)$_6$ precursor molecules with SiO$_2$ substrates is investigated by means of density functional theory calculations with and without inclusion of long range van der Waals interactions. We…
The adsorption of C60 on Si(111) has been studied by means of first-principles density functional calculations. A 2x2 adatom surface reconstruction was used to simulate the terraces of the 7x7 reconstruction. The structure of several…
High-temperature superconductivity confined to nanometer-size interfaces has been a long standing goal because of potential applications^{1,2} and the opportunity to study quantum phenomena in reduced dimensions^{3,4}. However, this is a…
Biomolecular condensates organize biochemical processes by spatially concentrating molecules while allowing for dynamic exchange with their surroundings. However, transport across their interface can be strongly attenuated, leading to…
Using density-functional theory, we predict that the oxidation of the Ru(0001) surface proceeds via the accumulation of sub-surface oxygen in two-dimensional islands between the first and second substrate layer. This leads locally to a…
We discuss the structural and electronic properties of tetragonal CuO grown on SrTiO3(100) by means of hybrid density functional theory. Our analysis explains the anomalously large Cu-O vertical distance observed in the experiments (~2.7 A)…
First-principles modeling of ferroelectric capacitors presents several technical challenges, due to the coexistence of metallic electrodes, long-range electrostatic forces and short-range interface chemistry. Here we show how these aspects…
Current advancements in battery technologies require electrodes to combine high-performance active material such as Silicon (Si) with two-dimensional materials such as transition metal carbides (MXenes) for prolonged cycle stability and…
Properties of inorganic-organic interfaces, such as their interface dipole, strongly depend on the structural arrangements of the organic molecules. A prime example is tetracyanoethylene (TCNE) on Cu(111), which shows two different phases…
Plasma-activated bonding of SiCN films offers high bonding strength at the hybrid-bonding interface, thereby enhancing mechanical reliability. Although experimental studies have shown that the interfacial bonding properties of SiCN films…
In complex transition metal oxide heterostructures of physically dissimilar perovskite compounds, interface phenomena can lead to novel physical properties not observed in either of their constituents. This remarkable feature opens new…
We present a density-functional theory study addressing the energetics and electronic structure properties of isolated oxygen adatoms at the SrTiO3(001) surface. Together with a surface lattice oxygen atom, the adsorbate is found to form a…
Using density-functional theory in combination with a thermodynamic formalism we calculate the relative stability of various structural models of the polar O-terminated (000-1)-O surface of ZnO. Model surfaces with different concentrations…
Interfacial bond formation during sputter deposition of metal oxide thin films onto polycarbonate (PC) is investigated by ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis of PC | X interfaces (X =…