What is it about?
To properly understand the interaction of films with structures, it is necessary to understand the patterns that they exhibit when adsorbed on these surfaces. At low temperatures, quantum effects can not be ignored, and these effects must be examined. In this work, we look at systems that have the simplest interactions with the most ordered of surfaces, those of a crystal. Understanding these systems is important to the beginning of an understanding of more complicated systems.
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Why is it important?
As devices get smaller, the surfaces become more important. Understanding what happens at these surfaces is then an important part of understanding these materials. Furthermore, the study of statistical mechanics shows us that dimensionality has an important effect on the nature of phase transitions, and these systems are our best examples of the physics in two dimensions. Finally, catalyse is a surface phenomena, and so surface physics is important to such studies.
Perspectives
This was just a fun project to do, and gave me an opportunity to try some new techniques. It also presented an interesting programming challenge. I have been interesting in the low temperature behavior of simple system (read noble-gas systems) for most of my career. There is little experimental work at the lowest of temperatures for the case studies in this work, and I hope to encourage experimentalists to investigate this system. Showing what can be learned from these investigations is important to this goal.
Anthony Novaco
Lafayette College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Direct-space–self-consistent-phonon treatment of monolayer structures and dynamics, The Journal of Chemical Physics, March 2020, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/1.5140007.
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