CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Provided by Infoscience - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
Supporting Information
Contact potentials, Fermi level equilibration and
surface charging
Pekka Peljo, a, * José A. Manzanares, b Hubert H. Girault a
aLaboratoire d’Electrochimie Physique et Analytique, École Polytechnique Fédérale de
Lausanne, EPFL Valais Wallis, Rue de l'Industrie 17, Case Postale 440, CH-1951 Sion,
Switzerland
bFaculty of Physics, Department of Thermodynamics, University of Valencia, c/Dr. Moliner, 50,
E-46100 Burjasot, Spain
1 BASIC CONCEPTS: FERMI LEVEL AND WORK FUNCTION OF A METAL
The electrochemical convention assigns the zero energy to an electron at rest in a field-free vacuum. Then, the electronic energies in a metal have negative values. The Fermi-Dirac distribution describes the probability of occupation of electronic states. At any temperature, the probability of occupation of a state with energy equal to the chemical potential − of the e electrons is 1/2. The number density of electrons in the conduction band of a metal determines