Tetragonal silver films on V(100):: Experimental and ab initio studies -: art. no. 195402

The growth and structure of ultrathin silver films (1-5 monolayers thick) deposited on a reconstructed V(100)-(5 x 1) surface have been studied by means of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). To model the structure of the system we have also performed density functional (DFT) calculations. It has been established that due to the annealing of deposited silver uniform films are formed and that the vanadium reconstruction is completely removed. As found from STM measurements and supported by ab initio calculations in the in-plane direction silver follows the structure of the V(100)-(1 x 1) lattice and is tetragonally distorted in the direction perpendicular to the surface. In addition, ab initio results predicted the adsorption energies of individual silver layers and the work function of Ag/V(100), both in accordance with experiments.