Site-Specific Reactivity of Ethylene at Distorted Dangling-Bond Configurations on Si(001)

Differences in adsorption and reaction energetics for ethylene on Si(001) are reported with respect to distorted dangling-bond configurations induced by hydrogen precoverage, as obtained by DFT calculations. This can help to understand the influence of surface defects and precoverage on the reactivity of organic molecules on semiconductor surfaces in general. The results show that the reactivity of surface dimers fully enclosed by hydrogen-covered atoms is essentially unchanged compared to the clean surface. This is confirmed by scanning tunneling microscopy measurements. On the contrary, adsorption sites with partially covered surface dimers show a drastic increase in reactivity. This is due to a lowering of the reaction barrier by more than 50 % relative to the clean surface, which is in line with previous experiments. Adsorption on dimers enclosed by molecule (ethylene)-covered surface atoms is reported to have a strongly decreased reactivity, as a result of destabilization of the intermediate state due to steric repulsion; this is quantified through periodic energy decomposition analysis. Furthermore, an approach for the calculation of Gibbs energies of adsorption based on statistical thermodynamics considerations is applied to the system. The results show that the loss in molecular entropy leads to a significant destabilization of adsorption states.