Electronic densities of states of bimetallic superlattices with interfacial diffusion

Abstract
The density of states at each layer of a bimetallic superlattice is calculated by expansion of the Green’s function in a continued fraction. We use a three-dimensional tight-binding model system, with three atomic layers of each type of atom, and study the effect of a small amount of interfacial diffusion. We find that a small proportion of randomly located atoms of the wrong kind in an interfacial layer changes the local density of states considerably, and that this effect is also appreciable in the total density of states for the superlattice, obtained by averaging adequately the local densities of states.