• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.313-325
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• 2007

In order to have better insights into adsorption of organic molecules on kaolinite surfaces, we performed quantum chemical calculations of interaction between three different model clusters of kaolinite siloxane surfaces and benzyl alcohol, with emphasis on the effect of size and lattice topology of the cluster on the variation of electron density and magnetic shielding tensor. Model cluster 1 is an ideal silicate tetrahedral surface that consists of 7 hexagonal rings, and model cluster 2 is composed of 7 ditrigonal siloxane rings with crystallographically distinct basal oxygen atoms in the cluster, and finally model cluster 3 has both tetrahedral and octahedral layers. The Mulliken charge analysis shows that siloxane surface of model cluster 3 undergoes the largest electron density transfer after the benzyl alcohol adsorption and that of model cluster 1 is apparently larger than that of model cluster 2. The difference of Mulliken charges of basal oxygen atoms before and after the adsorption is positively correlated with hydrogen bond strength. NMR chemical shielding tensor calculation of clusters without benryl alcohol shows that three different basal oxygen atoms (O3, O4, and O5) in model cluster 2 have the isotropic magnetic shielding tensor as $228.2{\pm}3.9,\;228.9{\pm}3.4,\;and\;222.3{\pm}3.0ppm$, respectively. After the adsorption, the difference of isotropic chemical shift varies from 1 to 5.5 ppm fer model cluster 1 and 2 while model cluster 2 apparently shows larger changes in isotropic chemical shift. The chemical shift of oxygen atoms is also positively correlated with electron density transfer. The current results show that the adsorption of benzyl alcohol on the kaolinite siloxane surfaces can largely be dominated by a weak hydrogen bonding and electrostatic force (charge-charge interaction) and demonstrate the importance of the cluster site and the lattice topology of surfaces on the adsorption behavior of the organic molecules on clay surfaces.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.284-284
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• 2016

Topological insulator (TI) is a bulk-insulating material with topologically protected Dirac surface states in the band gap. In particular, $Bi_2Se_3$ attracted great attention as a model three-dimensional TI due to its simple electronic structure of the surface states in a relatively large band gap (~0.3 eV). However, experimental efforts using $Bi_2Se_3$ have been difficult due to the abundance of structural defects, which frequently results in the bulk conduction being dominant over the surface conduction in transport due to the bulk doping effects of the defect sites. One promising approach in avoiding this problem is to reduce the structural defects by heteroepitaxially grow $Bi_2Se_3$ on a substrate with a compatible lattice structure, while also preventing surface degradation by encapsulating the pristine interface between $Bi_2Se_3$ and the substrate in a clean growth environment. A particularly promising choice of substrate for the heteroepitaxial growth is hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which has the same two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) layered structure and hexagonal lattice symmetry as $Bi_2Se_3$. Moreover, since h-BN is a dielectric insulator with a large bandgap energy of 5.97 eV and chemically inert surfaces, it is well suited as a substrate for high mobility electronic transport studies of vdW material systems. Here we report the heteroepitaxial growth and characterization of high quality topological insulator $Bi_2Se_3$ thin films prepared on h-BN layers. Especially, we used molecular beam epitaxy to achieve high quality TI thin films with extremely low defect concentrations and an ideal interface between the films and substrates. To optimize the morphology and microstructural quality of the films, a two-step growth was performed on h-BN layers transferred on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) compatible substrates. The resulting $Bi_2Se_3$ thin films were highly crystalline with atomically smooth terraces over a large area, and the $Bi_2Se_3$ and h-BN exhibited a clear heteroepitaxial relationship with an atomically abrupt and clean interface, as examined by high-resolution TEM. Magnetotransport characterizations revealed that this interface supports a high quality topological surface state devoid of bulk contribution, as evidenced by Hall, Shubnikov-de Haas, and weak anti-localization measurements. We believe that the experimental scheme demonstrated in this talk can serve as a promising method for the preparation of high quality TI thin films as well as many other heterostructures based on 2D vdW layered materials.