Electron Emission Energy Barriers and Stability of Sc2O3 with Adsorbed Ba and Ba–O

Abstract

In this study we employ Density Functional Theory (DFT) methods to investigate the surface energy barrier for electron emission (surface barrier) and thermodynamic stability of Ba and Ba-O species adsorption under conditions of high temperature (approximately 1200 K) and low pressure (approximately $10^{-10}$ Torr) on the low index surfaces of bixbyite $Sc_2O_3$. The role of Ba in lowering the cathode surface barrier is investigated via adsorption of atomic Ba and Ba-O dimers, where the highest simulated dimer coverage corresponds to a single monolayer film of rocksalt BaO. The change of the surface barrier of a semiconductor due to adsorption of surface species is decomposed into two parts: a surface dipole component and doping component. The lowest surface barrier with atomic Ba on $Sc_2O_3$ was found to be 2.12 eV and 2.04 eV for the (011) and (111) surfaces at 3 and 1 Ba atoms per surface unit cell (0.250 and 0.083 Ba per surface O), respectively. The lowest surface barrier for Ba-O on $Sc_2O_3$ was found to be 1.21 eV on (011) for a 7 Ba-O dimer-per-unit-cell coverage (0.583 dimers per surface O). Generally, we found that Ba in its atomic form on $Sc_2O_3$ surfaces is not stable relative to bulk BaO, while Ba-O dimer coverages between 3 to 7 Ba-O dimers per (011) surface unit cell (0.250 to 0.583 dimers per surface O) produce stable structures relative to bulk BaO. Ba-O dimer adsorption on $Sc_2O_3$ (111) surfaces was found to be unstable versus BaO over the full range of coverages studied. Investigation of combined n-type doping and surface dipole modification showed that their effects interact to yield a reduction less than the two contributions would yield separately.