PHASE-STABILITY OF ARTIFICIAL METALLIC SUPERLATTICES - CHEMICAL-ORDER EFFECT

With the advance of atom by atom deposition techniques, such as magnetron sputtering and molecular-beam epitaxy, it has become possible to design and manufacture materials with composition modulations in one dimension on an atomic scale. A theoretical understanding of the thermodynamic phase stability of these layered materials is still lacking. Therefore, as a first step, the role of short-range interactions within the context of the first-principles electronic theory of phase stability of substitutional bulk alloys on the stability of superlattices and interfaces at T = 0 K is examined.