materials Article Formation of Surface and Quantum-Well States in Ultra Thin Pt Films on the Au(111) Surface Igor V. Silkin 1,*, Yury M. Koroteev 1,2,3, Pedro M. Echenique 4,5 and Evgueni V. Chulkov 3,4,5 1 Department of Physics, Tomsk State University, 634050 Tomsk, Russia;
[email protected] 2 Institute of Strength Physics and Materials Science, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 634050 Tomsk, Russia 3 Department of Physics, Saint Petersburg State University, 198504 Saint Petersburg, Russia 4 Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), 20018 San Sebastian/Donostia, Basque Country, Spain;
[email protected] (P.M.E.);
[email protected] (E.V.C.) 5 Department of Materials Physics, Materials Physics Center CFM-MPC and Mixed Center CSIC-UPV, 20080 San Sebastian/Donostia, Basque Country, Spain * Correspondence: igor
[email protected]; Tel.: +34-943-01-8284 Received: 21 November 2017; Accepted: 7 December 2017; Published: 9 December 2017 Abstract: The electronic structure of the Pt/Au(111) heterostructures with a number of Pt monolayers n ranging from one to three is studied in the density-functional-theory framework. The calculations demonstrate that the deposition of the Pt atomic thin films on gold substrate results in strong modifications of the electronic structure at the surface. In particular, the Au(111) s-p-type Shockley surface state becomes completely unoccupied at deposition of any number of Pt monolayers. The Pt adlayer generates numerous quantum-well states in various energy gaps of Au(111) with strong spatial confinement at the surface. As a result, strong enhancement in the local density of state at the surface Pt atomic layer in comparison with clean Pt surface is obtained.