Spontaneous formation of grains has been observed for the MnAs layer grown by means of MBE on the GaN(0001)-(1x1) surface. Electronic structure of the system was investigated in situ by resonant photoemission spectroscopy. Density of the valence band states of MnAs and its changes due to increase of the layer thickness were revealed.
MnAs has been grown by means of MBE on the GaN(0001)-(1x1) surface. Two options of initiating the crystal growth were applied: (a) a regular MBE procedure (manganese and arsenic were delivered simultaneously) and (b) subsequent deposition of manganese and arsenic layers. It was shown that spontaneous formation of MnAs dots with the surface density of 1$cdot 10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$ and $2.5cdot 10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$, respectively (as observed by AFM), occurred for the layer thickness higher than 5 ML. Electronic structure of the MnAs/GaN systems was studied by resonant photoemission spectroscopy. That led to determination of the Mn 3d - related contribution to the total density of states (DOS) distribution of MnAs. It has been proven that the electronic structures of the MnAs dots grown by the two procedures differ markedly. One corresponds to metallic, ferromagnetic NiAs-type MnAs, the other is similar to that reported for half-metallic zinc-blende MnAs. Both system behave superparamagnetically (as revealed by magnetization measurements), but with both the blocking temperatures and the intra-dot Curie temperatures substantially different. The intra-dot Curie temperature is about 260 K for the former system while markedly higher than room temperature for the latter one. Relations between growth process, electronic structure and other properties of the studied systems are discussed. Possible mechanisms of half-metallic MnAs formation on GaN are considered.
Most spectroscopic methods for studying the electronic structure of metal surfaces have the disadvantage that either only occupied or only unoccupied states can be probed, and the signal is cut at the Fermi edge. This leads to significant uncertainties, when states are very close to the Fermi level. By performing low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy and ab initio calculations, we study the surface-electronic structure of La(0001) and Lu(0001), and demonstrate that in this way detailed information on the surface-electronic structure very close to the Fermi energy can be derived with high accuracy.
We report a combined microscopy and spectroscopy study of Au deposited on the Bi2Se3(0001) single crystal surface. At room temperature Au forms islands, according to the Volmer-Weber growth mode. Upon annealing to 100{deg} C the Au deposits are not stable and assemble into larger and thicker islands. The topological surface state of Bi2Se3 is weakly affected by the presence of Au. Contrary to other metals, such as Ag or Cr, a strong chemical instability at the Au/Bi2Se3 interface is ruled out. Core level analysis highlights Bi diffusion toward the surface of Au islands, in agreement with previous findings, while chemical interaction between Au and atomic Se is limited at the interfacial region. For the investigated range of Au coverages, the Au/Bi2Se3 heterostructure is inert towards CO and CO2 exposure at low pressure (10-8 mbar) regime.
Silicon oxide can be formed in a crystalline form, when prepared on a metallic substrate. It is a candidate support catalyst and possibly the ultimately-thin version of a dielectric host material for two-dimensional materials (2D) and heterostructures. We determine the atomic structure and chemical bonding of the ultimately thin version of the oxide, epitaxially grown on Ru(0001). In particular, we establish the existence of two sub-lattices defined by metal-oxygen-silicon bridges involving inequivalent substrate sites. We further discover four electronic bands below Fermi level, at high binding energies, two of them forming a Dirac cone at K point, and two others forming semi-flat bands. While the latter two correspond to hybridized states between the oxide and the metal, the former relate to the topmost silicon-oxygen plane, which is not directly coupled to the substrate. Our analysis is based on high resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and density functional theory calculations.
The direct growth of graphene on semiconducting or insulating substrates might help to overcome main drawbacks of metal-based synthesis, like metal-atom contaminations of graphene, transfer issues, etc. Here we present the growth of graphene on n-doped semiconducting Ge(110) by using an atomic carbon source and the study of the structural and electronic properties of the obtained interface. We found that graphene interacts weakly with the underlying Ge(110) substrate that keeps graphenes electronic structure almost intact promoting this interface for future graphene-semiconductor applications. The effect of dopants in Ge on the electronic properties of graphene is also discussed.