No Arabic abstract
Normal incidence 1 keV Ar$^+$ ion bombardment leads to amorphization and ultrasmoothing of Ge at room temperature, but at elevated temperatures the Ge surface remains crystalline and is unstable to the formation of self-organized nanoscale patterns of ordered pyramid-shaped pits. The physical phenomenon distinguishing the high temperature patterning from room temperature ultrasmoothing is believed to be a surface instability due to the Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier for diffusing vacancies and adatoms, which is not present on the amorphous material. This real-time GISAXS study compares smoothing of a pre-patterned Ge sample at room temperature with patterning of an initially flat Ge sample at an elevated temperature. In both experiments, when the nanoscale structures are relatively small in height, the average kinetics can be explained by a linear theory. The linear theory coefficients, indicating surface stability or instability, were extracted for both experiments. A comparison between the two measurements allows estimation of the contribution of the Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier to the self-organized formation of ordered nanoscale patterns on crystalline Ge surfaces.
We report on the structural properties of Ge_(1-x)Mn_x layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. In these layers, nanocolumns with a high Mn content are embedded in an almost-pure Ge matrix. We have used grazing-incidence X-ray scattering, atomic force and transmission electron microscopy to study the structural properties of the columns. We demonstrate how the elastic deformation of the matrix (as calculated using atomistic simulations) around the columns, as well as the average inter-column distance can account for the shape of the diffusion around Bragg peaks.
To explore the origin of the Fermi level pinning in germanium we investigate the Ge(001) and Ge(001):H surfaces. The absence of relevant surface states in the case of Ge(001):H should unpin the surface Fermi level. This is not observed. For samples with donors as majority dopants the surface Fermi level appears close to the top of the valence band regardless of the surface structure. Surprisingly, for the passivated surface it is located below the top of the valence band allowing scanning tunneling microscopy imaging within the band gap. We argue that the well known electronic mechanism behind band bending does not apply and a more complicated scenario involving ionic degrees of freedom is therefore necessary. Experimental techniques involve four point probe electric current measurements, scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy.
We investigate the valence band structure of Pb on Ge(001) by Angle-Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy. Three Ge bands, G1, G2, and G3, were observed on Ge(001) 2x1 clean surface. In addition to these three bands, a forth band (R band) is found in the 2 ML of Pb coverage. The R band continues to appear even when the surface superstructure changed. The position of the R band does not depend on Pb coverage. These results indicate that the R band derives from Ge subsurface states known as surface resonance states. Furthermore, the effective mass of G3 is significantly reduced when this forth band exists. We found that this reduction of the G3 effective mass was explained by the interaction of the G3 and the surface resonance band. Consequently, the surface resonance band penetrates the Ge subsurface region affecting the Ge bulk states. We observed the hybridization between Ge states and the surface resonance states induced by Pb adsorption.
Glycine on Cu(001) is used as an example to illustrate the critical role of molecular polarity and finite temperature effect in self-assembly of biomolecules at a metal surface. A unified picture for glycine self-assembly on Cu(001) is derived based on full polarity compensation considerations, implemented as a generic rule. Temperature plays a non-trivial role: the ground-state structure at 0 K is absent at room temperature, where intermolecular hydrogen bonding overweighs competing molecule-substrate interactions. The unique p(2X4) structure from the rule is proved as the most stable one by ab initio molecular dynamics at room temperature, and its STM images and anisotropic free-electron-like dispersion are in excellent agreement with experiments. Moreover, the rich self-assembling patterns including the heterochiral and homochiral phases, and their interrelationships are entirely governed by the same mechanism.
Atomic structures of quasi-one-dimensional (1D) character can be grown on semiconductor substrates by metal adsorption. Significant progress concerning study of their 1D character has been achieved recently by condensing noble metal atoms on the Ge(001) surface. In particular, Pt and Au yield high quality reconstructions with low defect densities. We reported on the self-organized growth and the long-range order achieved, and present data from scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) on the structural components. For Pt/Ge(001), we find hot substrate growth is the preferred method for self-organization. Despite various dimerized bonds, these atomic wires exhibit metallic conduction at room temperature, as documented by low-bias STM. For the recently discovered Au/Ge(001) nanowires, we have developed a deposition technique that allows complete substrate coverage. The Au nanowires are extremely well separated spatially, exhibit a continuous 1D charge density, and are of solid metallic conductance. In this review we present structural details for both types of nanowires, and discuss similarities and differences. A perspective is given for their potential to host a one-dimensional electron system. The ability to condense different noble metal nanowires demonstrates how atomic control of the structure affects the electronic properties.