Surface Stress - Physical Origins of Surface Stress

Physical Origins of Surface Stress

Origin of surface stress could be understood by nature of chemical bonding of atoms at the surface. In metallic materials, atomic chemical bonding structure at the surface is very different from in the bulk. Therefore, equilibrium interatomic distance between surface atoms is different from bulk atoms. Since surface and bulk atoms are structurally coherent, the interior of the solid can be considered as applying a stress on the surface.

For illustration, figure 1 shows a simple picture of bond charges near the surface of a 2-dimensional crystal with charge (election) density around sphere atoms. Surface atoms only have two nearest neighbors compared with bulk atoms, which have four (for this example case). The loss of neighbors which results from the creation of a metal surface reduces the local electron density around the atoms near the surface. Surface atoms then sit in a lower average electron density than bulk atoms. The response of these surface atoms would be to attempt to reduce their interatomic distance in order to increase surrounding charge density. Therefore, surface atoms would create a positive surface stress (tensile). In the other words, if the surface charge density is the same as in the bulk, surface stress would be zero.

Surface stress, which created by redistribution of electron density around surface atoms, can be both positive (tensile) or negative (compressive). If the surface is not clean meaning there are atoms sitting on a flat surface (adsorbates), charge density would then be modified leading to a different surface stress state compared with a perfect clean surface.