Surface Relaxation of Aluminum

We performed a total energy calculation of clean alumunum surfaces of three low indices based on a density functional theory with a local density approximation, using the Ceperly-Alder exhange correlation parametrized by Perdew and Zunger. Pseudopotentials were generated for Al of which the plane wave cut-off was 15Ry. We used Gaussian broadening of a Fermi level to accelerate the convergence of our calculation with the Gaussian energy smearing parameter of 0.005Ry. First, we determine the lattice constant of the aluminum of an face-centered-cubic structure to be 3.96 which is comparable to the experimental data of 4.05 . The cohesive energy of 4.20eV/atom and the bulk modulus of 0.775$\times$1012dyne/cm2 are also comparable to the experimental values of 3.39eV/atom and 0.772$\times$1012dyne/cm2, respectively. Then we investigated the surface relaxation of (100), (110) and (111) surfaces using a 9-layer slab separated by 6-layer thick vacuum. The results are consistent with the existing experimental results.