The adhesion properties of the Ag/α-Al2O3() interface: an ab initio study

Ab initio computer simulations of the atomic and electronic structure of the Ag/a-Al2O3(0 0 0 1) (corundum) interface have been performed for a periodic two-dimensional slab model using the Hartree–Fock method and a posteriori electron correlation corrections.We have considered both Al- and O-terminated corundum substrate surfaces.The dependence of the adhesion energy on the interfacial distance has been analyzed for the two most favorable Ag adsorption positions over corundum and for two different metal coverages (a 1/3 monolayer (ML) of the Ag(1 1 1) crystallographic plane and a full Ag(1 1 1) monolayer).The two different terminations (Al- and O-) give rise to qualitatively different resu…