We have studied the adsorption structure of pyrazine $({\text{C}}_{4}{\text{H}}_{4}{\text{N}}_{2})$ on the Si(100) surface by using density-functional theory calculations within a slab representation. We found that the adsorption energetics strongly depends on the ${\text{C}}_{4}{\text{H}}_{4}{\text{N}}_{2}$ coverage. At 0.25 monolayer (one monolayer is defined as one pyrazine molecule per Si dimer), two different molecular configurations are equally favored in energy: the end-on model where ${\text{C}}_{4}{\text{H}}_{4}{\text{N}}_{2}$ adsorbs on the down atom of a Si dimer and the cross-row model where ${\text{C}}_{4}{\text{H}}_{4}{\text{N}}_{2}$ connects two dimer rows. At 0.5 monolayer, the interactions between adsorbed molecules results in a far stabilized cross-row configuration in which molecules arrange in series along the row-perpendicular direction. This cross-row chain configuration is in good accordance with the images of a recent scanning tunneling microscopy experiment. When including the van der Waals interactions in our calculations, the cross-row structures were found to have larger energy gains, thus being more favored in energy than the end-on structures. The adsorption picture of the present slab-model calculations differs from previous cluster-model calculations, which questions the accuracy of the cluster representation of this adsorbed system.
Read full abstract