Inelastic Effects in Low-Energy Electron Reflectivity of Two-dimensional Materials

Abstract

A simple method is proposed for inclusion of inelastic effects (electron absorption) in computations of low-energy electron reflectivity (LEER) spectra. The theoretical spectra are formulated by matching of electron wavefunctions obtained from first-principles computations in a repeated vacuum-slab-vacuum geometry. Inelastic effects are included by allowing these states to decay in time in accordance with an imaginary term in the potential of the slab, and by mixing of the slab states in accordance with the same type of distribution as occurs in a free-electron model. LEER spectra are computed for various two-dimensional materials, including free-standing multilayer graphene, graphene on copper substrates, and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on cobalt substrates.

21 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Microscopic thickness determination of thin graphite films formed on SiC from quantized oscillation in reflectivity of low-energy electrons
• Low-energy Electron Reflectivity from Graphene
• Low energy excitations in graphite: The role of dimensionality and lattice defects

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Characterization of hexagonal boron nitride layers on nickel surfaces by low-energy electron microscopy
• Formation of hexagonal Boron Nitride on Graphene-covered Copper Surfaces
• Thickness characterization of atomically-thin WSe${}_2$ on epitaxial graphene by low-energy electron reflectivity oscillations
• Substitutional mechanism for growth of hexagonal boron nitride on epitaxial graphene
• Ab initio study of angle-resolved electron reflection spectroscopy of few-layer graphene