title: Efficient first-principles simulation of noncontact atomic force microscopy for structural analysis.
abstract: We propose an efficient scheme to simulate noncontact atomic force microscopy images by using first-principles self-consistent potential from the sample as input without explicit modeling of the atomic force microscopy tip. Our method is applied to various types of semiconductor surfaces including Si(111)-(7x7), TiO2(110)-(1x1), Ag/Si(111)-(sqrt[3]xsqrt[3])R30 degrees, and Ge/Si(105)-(1x2) surfaces. We obtain good agreement with experimental results and previous theoretical studies, and our method can aid in identifying different structural models for surface reconstruction.
authors.affiliation: Center for Computational Materials, Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, USA.
authors.forename: T-L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: C Z
authors.initials: CZ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: James R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Chelikowsky