Surface and Step Conductivities on Si(111) Surfaces

Abstract

Four-point measurements using a multi-tip scanning tunneling microscope (STM) are carried out in order to determine surface and step conductivities on Si(111) surfaces. In a first step, distance-dependent four-point measurements in the linear configuration are used in combination with an analytical three-layer model for charge transport to disentangle the 2D surface conductivity from non-surface contributions. A termination of the Si(111) surface with either Bi or H results in the two limiting cases of a pure 2D or 3D conductance, respectively. In order to further disentangle the surface conductivity of the step-free surface from the contribution due to atomic steps, a square four-probe configuration is applied as function of the rotation angle. In total this combined approach leads to an atomic step conductivity of ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{step}}=(29\pm 9)$ ${\mathrm{\Omega }}^{-1}{\mathrm{m}}^{-1}$ and to a step-free surface conductivity of ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{surf}}=(9\pm 2)\cdot 10^{-6}{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{-1}/\square$ for the Si(111)-(7$\times$7) surface.

Main paper: 5 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental material: 6 pages, 3 figures. The Supplemental Material contains details on the sample preparation and measurement procedure, additional experimental results for Si(111) samples with different doping levels, and the description of the three-layer conductance model

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