STM-STIMULATED MODIFICATION OF SOLIDS - A QUANTUM-CHEMICAL STUDY

We use the quantum chemical approach to build a model of solid surface modification by means of tunneling current pulses in the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which stimulate highly local physical and chemical processes. We analyse the external electrical field effect due to the STM tip upon the electronic structure of some model clusters: Ag(n), (PdCl2)n and Ag6I8, using a semi-empirical calculation procedure (Extended Huckel method). The calculation results allow one to determine the directions of cluster structure destabilization, which can model the solid surface transformations, to propose possible ways of cluster decomposition as the result of the tip field pulses, and to show peculiarities of their electronic structure under the external fields.