Role of van der Waals forces in the diffraction of noble gases from metal surfaces

The role of van der Waals (vdW) forces in the description of scattering processes of noble gases from metal surfaces is currently under debate. Although features of the potential energy surface such as anticorrugation or adsorption energies are sometimes found to be well described by standard densit...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Del Cueto, M., Sánchez Muzas, Alberto Pablo, Füchsel, G., Gatti, F., Martín García, Fernando, Díaz Oliva, Cristina
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/714252
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/714252
https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.060301
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:van der Waals (vdW)
density functional theory (DFT)
Química
Descripción
Sumario:The role of van der Waals (vdW) forces in the description of scattering processes of noble gases from metal surfaces is currently under debate. Although features of the potential energy surface such as anticorrugation or adsorption energies are sometimes found to be well described by standard density functional theory (DFT), the performance of DFT to describe diffraction spectra may rely on the accuracy of the vdW functionals used. To analyze the precise role of these vdW forces in noble gas diffraction by metal surfaces, we have thoroughly studied the case of Ne/Ru(0001), for which accurate experimental results are available. We have carried out classical and quantum dynamics calculations by using DFT-based potentials that account for the effect of vdW interactions at different levels of accuracy. From the comparison of our results with experimental data, we conclude that the inclusion of vdW effects is crucial to properly describe diffraction of noble gases from metal surfaces. We show that among the vdW-DFT functionals available in the literature, not all of them can be used to accurately describe this process