Structure of 6H–SiC(0001) Surfaces from AB-Initio Calculations

Abstract

We report the results of ab-initio calculations of structural properties of hexagonal 6H–SiC(0001) surfaces. The calculations have been carried out self-consistently within local density approximation employing supercell geometries, smooth norm-conserving pseudopotentials in separable form and Gaussian orbital basis sets. We have investigated several structural models for adatom-induced [Formula: see text] reconstructions with adsorbed Si or C adatoms or trimers residing in threefold-symmetric T 4 or H 3 positions above Si- or C-terminated substrate surfaces, respectively. In the case of the Si-terminated substrate surface our results favor Si adatoms in T 4 sites as optimal configuration in very good agreement with experimental data. For the C-terminated substrate surface our results indicate that none of the investigated [Formula: see text] adatom or trimer configurations is the optimal surface structure.