Atomic Force Microscope manipulation of Ag atom on the Si(111) surface

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to understand how an AFM tip influences Ag atom diffusion on Si(111), revealing mechanisms that enable atom manipulation with different tip materials and structures.

Contribution

It provides detailed microscopic insights into how AFM tips alter diffusion barriers and trapping, facilitating atom manipulation on semiconductor surfaces.

Findings

AFM tips reduce diffusion barriers significantly.

Tip material and shape affect trapping ability.

Atom manipulation is feasible with various AFM tips.

Abstract

We present first-principles total-energy electronic-structure calculations that provide the microscopic mechanism of the Ag atom diffusion between the half unit cells (HUCs) on the Si(111)-(7x7) surface with and without the tip of the atomic force microscope (AFM). We find that, without the presence of the AFM tip, the diffusions between the two HUCs are almost symmetric with the energy barrier of about 1 eV in the both directions. The diffusion is a two-step process with an intermediate metastable configuration in which the Ag atom is at the boundary of the HUCs. With the presence of the tip, we find that the reaction pathways are essentially the same, but the energy barrier in one direction is substantially reduced to be 0.2 - 0.4 eV by the tip, while that of the diffusion in the reverse direction remains larger than 1 eV. The Si tip reduces the energy barrier more than the Pt tip due to the flexibility of the tip apex structure. In addition to the reduction of the barrier, the tip traps the diffusing adatom preventing the diffusion in the reverse direction. Also we find that the shape of the tip apex structure is important for the trapping ability of the adatom. When the tip apex structure is blunt, the adatom interacts with the tip atom other than the tip apex atom. The bond formation between the AFM tip atom and the surface adatom is essential for the atom manipulation using the AFM tip. Our results show that the atom manipulation is possible with both the metallic and semiconducting AFM tips.