Hysteretic behaviour of the tip-sample interaction on an InAs(110) surface: an ab initio study

摘要

We performed an ab initio study of tip-sample interactions between an SiH_3 tip and an InAs(l 10) surface when the tip is on top of As and In atoms. The calculated force curves and the corresponding normalized frequency shift curves exhibit discontinuities. We analysed these jumps in the force curves from the point of view of the structural changes of the InAs(l 10) surface due to its interaction with the tip and compared them with those obtained for an Si(l 11) 7 x 7 surface. The simulation of a complete NC-AFM image shows reasonable agreement with the experiment.