Contact Potentials, Fermi Level Equilibration, and Surface Charging

Contact Potentials, Fermi Level Equilibration, and Surface Charging.

This article focuses on contact electrification from thermodynamic equilibration of the electrochemical potential of the electrons of two conductors upon contact. The contact potential difference generated in bimetallic macro- and nanosystems, the Fermi level after the contact, and the amount and location of the charge transferred from one metal to the other are discussed. The three geometries ...

Charging and discharging at the nanoscale: Fermi level equilibration of metallic nanoparticles

The redox properties of metallic nanoparticles are discussed, in particular the relationships between excess charge, size and the Fermi level of the electrons. The redox potentials are derived using simple electrostatic models to provide a straightforward understanding of the basic phenomena. The different techniques used to measure the variation of Fermi level are presented. Finally, redox asp...

Surface charging, discharging and chemical modification at a sliding contact

Surface recombination, surface states and Fermi level pinning

2014 Surface and interface recombination processes, which are becoming more and more important with the appearance of small-size optoelectronic devices, are still not well understood because reliable data are very scarce. We report here the first simultaneous in situ measurements of the density and position of surface states, of the position of the Fermi level at the surface, and of the surface...

Merging bond-order potentials with charge equilibration.

A method is presented for extending any bond-order potential (BOP) to include charge transfer between atoms through a modification of the split-charge equilibration (SQE) formalism. Variable limits on the maximum allowed charge transfer between atomic pairs are defined by mapping bond order to an amount of shared charge in each bond. Charge transfer is interpreted as an asymmetry in how the sha...