No Arabic abstract
Determining accurate absolute surface energies for polar surfaces of semiconductors has been a great challenge in decades. Here, we propose pseudo-hydrogen passivation to calculate them, using density functional theory approaches. By calculating the energy contribution from pseudo-hydrogen using either a pseudo molecule method or a tetrahedral cluster method, we obtained (111) surfaces energies of Si, GaP, and ZnS with high self-consistency. This method quantitatively confirms that surface energy is determined by the number and the energy of dangling bonds of surface atoms. Our findings may greatly enhance the basic understandings of different surfaces and lead to novel strategies in the crystal growth.
We report on first-principles calculations of multilayers of zinc-blende half-metallic ferromagnets CrAs and CrSb with III-V and II-VI semiconductors, in the [001] orientation. We examine the ideal and tetragonalised structures, as well as the case of an intermixed interface. We find that, as a rule, half-metallicity can be conserved throughout the heterostructures, provided that the character of the local coordination and bonding is not disturbed. At the interfaces with semiconductors, we describe a mechanism that can give also a non-integer spin moment per interface transition atom, and derive a simple rule to evaluate it.
The characterization and applications of topological insulators depend critically on their protected surface states, which, however, can be obscured by the presence of trivial dangling bond states. Our first principle calculations show that this is the case for the pristine $(111)$ surface of SnTe. Yet, the predicted surface states unfold when the dangling bond states are passivated in proper chemisorption. We further extract the anisotropic Fermi velocities, penetration lengths and anisotropic spin textures of the unfolded $barGamma$- and $bar M$-surface states, which are consistent with the theory in http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.86.081303 Phys. Rev. B 86, 081303 (R). More importantly, this chemisorption scheme provides an external control of the relative energies of different Dirac nodes, which is particularly desirable in multi-valley transport.
We present a theoretical study of surface states close to 3d transition metal adatoms (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni and Cu) on a Cu(111) surface in terms of an embedding technique using the fully relativistic Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method. For each of the adatoms we found resonances in the s-like states to be attributed to a localization of the surface states in the presence of an impurity. We studied the change of the s-like densities of states in the vicinity of the surface state band-edge due to scattering effects mediated via the adatoms d-orbitals. The obtained results show that a magnetic impurity causes spin-polarization of the surface states. In particular, the long-range oscillations of the spin-polarized s-like density of states around an Fe adatom are demonstrated.
The diamond and zinc-blende semiconductors are well-known and have been widely studied for decades. Yet, their electronic structure still surprises with unexpected topological properties of the valence bands. In this joint theoretical and experimental investigation we demonstrate for the benchmark compounds InSb and GaAs that the electronic structure features topological surface states below the Fermi energy. Our parity analysis shows that the spin-orbit split-off band near the valence band maximum exhibits a strong topologically non-trivial behavior characterized by the $mathcal{Z}_2$ invariants $(1;000)$. The non-trivial character emerges instantaneously with non-zero spin-orbit coupling, in contrast to the conventional topological phase transition mechanism. textit{Ab initio}-based tight-binding calculations resolve topological surface states in the occupied electronic structure of InSb and GaAs, further confirmed experimentally by soft X-ray angle-resolved photoemission from both materials. Our findings are valid for all other materials whose valence bands are adiabatically linked to those of InSb, i.e., many diamond and zinc-blende semiconductors, as well as other related materials, such as half-Heusler compounds.
Here, we clarify the central role of the miscut during group III-V/ group IV crystal growth. We show that the miscut first impacts the initial antiphase domain distribution, with two distinct nucleation-driven and terraces-driven regimes. It is then inferred how the antiphase domain distribution mean phase and mean lateral length are affected by the miscut. An experimental confirmation is given through the comparison of antiphase domain distributions in GaP and GaSb/AlSb samples grown on nominal and vicinal Si substrates. The antiphase domain burying step of GaP/Si samples is then observed at the atomic scale by scanning tunneling microscopy. The steps arising from the miscut allow growth rate imbalance between the two phases of the crystal and the growth conditions can deeply modify the imbalance coefficient, as illustrated with GaAs/Si. We finally explain how a monodomain III-V semiconductor configuration can be achieved even on low miscut substrates.