Nearly Massless Electrons in the Silicon Interface with a Metal Film

Abstract

We demonstrate the realization of nearly massless electrons in the most widely used device material, silicon, at the interface with a metal film. Using angle-resolved photoemission, we found that the surface band of a monolayer lead film drives a hole band of the Si inversion layer formed at the interface with the film to have nearly linear dispersion with an effective mass about 20 times lighter than bulk Si and comparable to graphene. The reduction of mass can be accounted for by repulsive interaction between neighboring bands of the metal film and Si substrate. Our result suggests a promising way to take advantage of massless carriers in silicon-based thin-film devices, which can also be applied for various other semiconductor devices.

4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (4)

• Two-Dimensional Gas of Massless Dirac Fermions in Graphene
• Experimental Observation of Quantum Hall Effect and Berry's Phase in Graphene
• Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
• A topological Dirac insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase : Experimental observation of first strong topological insulator

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• Radial Band Structure of Electrons in Liquid Metals
• Hexagonal Indium Double Layer on Si(111)-($\sqrt{7}\times \sqrt{3})$
• Graphene-like metallic-on-silicon field effect transistor