A prerequisite towards achieving biological and chemical sensing applications is to to investigate, understand and quantify the effect of the absorbants on the electronic structure of surfaces. Surface states at semiconductors influence the electronic properties of devices and heterostructures since they can induce Fermi level pinning and bending of the conduction and valence band at the surface and at the interfaces.
EU Marie Curie Actions—Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP).
The majority of III-N are grown along the polar c-axis of the wurtzite structure, leading to an enhanced carrier separation due to polarization-induced electrostatic fields of the order of MV/cm. A promising approach preventing such effects is the growth along semipolar orientations, i.e. planes with a nonzero h, k, or i and a nonzero l Miller index. A fascinating feature of the semipolar planes is that depending on their orientation they may exhibit either Ga-polar or N-polar “flavor” and on the same time lye close to m- or a-plane non-polar character.
The project aims to study corrosion, a detrimental process with an enormous impact on global economy, by combining denstiy-functional theory calculations with thermodynamic concepts.
Ab-initio calculations are combined with thermodynamic considerations to investigate the stability of polar ZnO(0001)-Zn surfaces in contact with dry and humid oxygen environment.
Heterogeneous nucleation and the growth of microstructures are often accompanied by elastic deformations which can significantly influence the thermodynamical properties and kinetics of these processes. Despite the obvious relevance of these phenomena, generally accepted theories which take into account the elastic long-range interactions in a consistent way are not yet available, especially under consideration of the atomic structures and ordering. In this project, we investigate the influence of these new effects on the dynamical processes of heterogeneous nucleation and microstructure development.
