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STM/STS investigation of silicon adatoms

R. STIUFIUC1,2,* , B. GRANDIDIER3, G. STIUFIUC1

Affiliation

  1. Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Physics, Cluj Napoca, Romania
  2. University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Iuliu Hatieganu”, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
  3. Institut d'Electronique, Microelectronique et Nanotechnologie (IEMN), Dept. ISEN, Lille France

Abstract

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) and Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STS) are two complementary techniques capable of resolving structures and studying electronic transport on atomic scale. In this letter we report on topographic characterization of boron passivated Si(111) surface and on electronic transport measurements performed on passivated and unpassivated silicon adatoms. The topographic measurements revealed the presence of unpassivated silicon dangling bonds (DB) on B/Si(111) 3 3 R30° surface whilst the spectroscopic measurements revealed the electronic structure of the two types of silicon adatoms: passivated and unpassivated ones. The presence of a dangling bond state inside the band gap, completely decoupled from any other state, is used to explain the topographical contrast observed in STM images and the high tunneling currents measured in STS experiments.

Keywords

Scanning tunneling microscopy, Electronic transport, Quantum state.

Citation

R. STIUFIUC, B. GRANDIDIER, G. STIUFIUC, STM/STS investigation of silicon adatoms, Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials - Rapid Communications, 3, 10, October 2009, pp.1005-1007 (2009).

Submitted at: Aug. 17, 2009

Accepted at: Oct. 2, 2009