Aromatic molecules on low-index coinage metal surfaces: Many-body dispersion effects

Understanding the binding mechanism for aromatic molecules on transition-metal surfaces in atomic scale is a major challenge in designing functional interfaces for to (opto)electronic devices. Here, we employ the state-of-the-art many-body dispersion (MBD) approach, coupled with density functional theory methods, to study the interactions of benzene with low-index coinage metal surfaces. The many-body effects contribute mostly to the (111) surface, and leastly to the (110) surface. This corresponds to the same sequence of planar atomic density of face-centered-cubic lattices, i.e., (111) > (100) > (110). The binding energy for benzene/Au(110) is even stronger than that for benzene/Ag(110), due to a larger broadening of molecular orbitals in the former case. On the other hand, our calculations show almost identical binding energies for benzene on Ag(111) and Au(111), which contradicts the classic d-band center theory that could well predict the trend in chemisorption energies for various small molecules on a number of metal surfaces. Our results provide important insight into the benchmark adsorption systems with opener surfaces, which could help in designing more complex functional interfaces.