ATOMISTIC MODELING OF THE METAL-OXIDE INTERFACE WITH IMAGE INTERACTIONS

We calculate the interfacial energy and lowest energy relative position for an Ag (001)/MgO (001) interface. The dominant image terms and short-range repulsions are included in full, and the MgO ions are relaxed to equilibrium using the MIDAS code. An essential new feature is the suppression of charge density fluctuations with wave-vectors greater than a (Fermi wavevector) cutoff. Our results show that the powerful methods based on interatomic potentials, widely used for ionic systems, can be extended to metal/ionic interfaces.