Temperature dependent ARPES of the metallic-like bands in Si(553)-Au

TL;DR

This study uses ARPES to analyze how the metallic-like bands in Si(553)-Au change with temperature, clarifying the nature of its low-temperature phase and ruling out a structural phase transition.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed temperature-dependent ARPES analysis of Si(553)-Au's metallic bands, addressing stability challenges and clarifying the low-temperature phase nature.

Findings

Band-filling and Fermi-velocity remain unchanged across temperatures.

The low-temperature phase is not due to a structural phase transition.

Overcomes experimental challenges related to surface stability and photo-voltage effects.

Abstract

We conducted a thorough investigation into the temperature dependence of the metallic-like bands of Si(553)-Au using angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Our study addresses the challenges posed by the short-term stability of the surface and photo-voltage effects, which we overcame to extract changes in the band-filling and Fermi-velocity. Our findings shed light on the low-temperature phase of the step edge in Si(553)-Au, which has been a topic of ongoing debate regarding its structural or electronic nature. Through comparison with theoretical predictions of a structural-related low-temperature to high-temperature phase transition, we discovered that the band-filling and Fermi-velocity do not change accordingly, thereby ruling out this scenario. Our study contributes to a better understanding of this material system and provides an important reference for future research.