Surfaces of complex intermetallic compounds: insights from density functional calculations.

CONSPECTUS: Complex intermetallic compounds are a class of ordered alloys consisting of quasicrystals and other ordered compounds with large unit cells; many of them are approximant phases to quasicrystals. Quasicrystals are the limiting case where the unit cell becomes infinitely large; approximants are series of periodic structures converging to the quasicrystal. While the unique properties of quasicrystals have inspired many investigations of their surfaces, relatively little attention has been devoted to the surface properties of the approximants. In general, complex intermetallic compounds display rather irregular, often strongly corrugated surfaces, making the determination of their atomic structure a very complex and challenging task. During recent years, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been used to study the surfaces of several complex intermetallic compounds. If atomic resolution can be achieved, STM permits visualization of the local atomistic surface structure. However, the interpretation of the STM images is often ambiguous and sometimes even impossible without a realistic model of the structure of the surface and the distribution of the electronic density above the surface. Here we demonstrate that ab initio density functional theory (DFT) can be used to determine the energetics and the geometric and electronic structures of the stable surfaces of complex intermetallic compounds. Calculations for surfaces with different chemical compositions can be performed in the grand canonical ensemble. Simulated cleavage experiments permit us to determine the formation of the cleavage planes requiring the lowest energy. The investigation of the adsorption of molecular species permits a comparison with temperature-programmed thermal desorption experiments. Calculated surface electronic densities of state can be compared with the results of photoelectron spectroscopy. Simulations of detailed STM images can be directly confronted with the experimental results. Detailed results are presented for two intermetallic compounds that have recently attracted much attention as active and highly selective catalysts for the semihydrogenation of alkynes to alkenes, but the identification of the catalytically active surfaces was found to be very difficult. The crystal structure of B20-type GaPd can be interpreted as the lowest order approximant of icosahedral Al-Pd-Mn quasicrystals. Among the low-index surfaces, the {100} surface shows 2-fold symmetry and the {210} surface pseudo-5-fold symmetry; for both the surface stoichiometry is identical to that of the bulk. Because the structure lacks inversion symmetry, the {111} surfaces have polar character and permit terminations of widely different chemical composition. Results for all three surfaces are presented and compared with the available experiments. The crystal structure of orthorhombic Al13Co4 is built by pentagonal clusters similar to those found in decagonal Al-Co and Al-Ni-Co quasicrystals. A simulated cleavage experiment shows that the constituent clusters remain intact upon cleavage, resulting in the formation of a highly corrugated (100) surface. The calculated STM images are found to be in very good agreement with experiment and permit in addition identification of possible surface modifications by the desorption of individual atoms. Pentagonal motifs on the {210} surface of GaPd and on the (100) surface of Al13Co4 consisting of simple- and transition-metal atoms have been identified as the catalytically active centers for the semihydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene.