2014/03/11 by Boyan Obreshkov, Obreshkov, Boyan, Bruno Lepetit +1
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Electron and X-Ray Spectroscopy Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1403.2986
openalex publication_date 2014/03/11 · openalex created_date 2022/10/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We evaluate the electron emission current density from jellium metallic\nsurfaces in the Thomas-Fermi-von-Weizs "acker approximation. We implement the\nweighted density approximation (WDA) for description of the exchange and\ncorrelation energy of interacting electrons. We find the emission mechanism\nexhibits crossover from quantum to classical over-barrier escape of electrons\nfrom the surface. Well below a surface-specific threshold field strength Ed,\nelectron tunneling is mainly affected by the change of the metal workfunction,\nand is less sensitive to the detailed shape of the surface barrier. In\nparticular, since the position of the image charge plane for electrons leaving\nthe surface does not precisely coincide with the centroid of the induced\nscreening charge at the surface in response to the applied electric field, we\nfind an effective increase in the metal workfunction by \Δ W \∼ 0.01\neV, which decreases the dark current.\n