The Nature of Ferromagnetism in a System of Self-Ordered α-FeSi Nanorods on a Si(111)-4° Vicinal Surface: Experiment and Theory.

In this study, the appearance of magnetic moments and ferromagnetism in nanostructures of non-magnetic materials based on silicon and transition metals (such as iron) was considered experimentally and theoretically. An analysis of the related literature shows that for a monolayer iron coating on a vicinal silicon surface with (111) orientation after solid-phase annealing at 450-550 °C, self-ordered two-dimensional islands of α-FeSi displaying superparamagnetic properties are formed. We studied the transition to ferromagnetic properties in a system of α-FeSi nanorods (NRs) in the temperature range of 2-300 K with an increase in the iron coverage to 5.

Theoretical approach to embed nanocrystallites into a bulk crystalline matrix and the embedding influence on the electronic band structure and optical properties of the resulting heterostructures.

We develop an approach and present results of the combined molecular dynamics and density functional theory calculations of the structural and optical properties of the nanometer-sized crystallites embedded in a bulk crystalline matrix. The method is designed and implemented for both compatible and incompatible lattices of the nanocrystallite (NC) and the host matrix, when determining the NC optimal orientation relative to the matrix constitutes a challenging problem. We suggest and substantiate an expression for the cost function of the search algorithm, which is the energy per supercell generalized for varying number of atoms in the latter.

Self-organization of CrSi2 nanoislands on Si(111) and growth of monocrystalline silicon with buried multilayers of CrSi2 nanocrystallites.

The process of self-organization of CrSi2 nanosize islands on Si(111)7 x 7 surface has been investigated during reactive deposition (RDE) of Cr at 500 degrees C by methods of low energy diffraction (LEED) and differential reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). Morphology of grown samples has been studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM). DRS data have demonstrated the semiconductor nature of silicide islands from the beginning of Cr deposition at 500 degreesC.