Surface Modification and Subsequent Fermi Density Enhancement of Bi(111)

TL;DR

This study combines experimental and theoretical methods to analyze how surface defects on Bi(111) influence local electronic states, revealing that certain defects increase the Fermi density and are thermodynamically stable.

Contribution

It provides new insights into defect-induced surface state modifications on Bi(111) using combined spectroscopy, microscopy, and DFT calculations.

Findings

Bilayer step edges have lower DOS around Fermi level.

Ion bombardment increases bilayer and monolayer step edges.

Surface defects lead to increased Fermi density and are stable under UHV.

Abstract

Defects introduced to the surface of Bi(111) break the translational symmetry and modify the surface states locally. We present a theoretical and experimental study of the 2D defects on the surface of Bi(111) and the states that they induce. Bi crystals cleaved in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) at low temperature (110 K) and the resulting ion-etched surface are investigated by low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) as well as spectroscopy (STS) techniques in combination with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. STS measurements of cleaved Bi(111) reveal that a commonly observed bilayer step edge has a lower density of states (DOS) around the Fermi level as compared to the atomic-flat terrace. Following ion bombardment, the Bi(111) surface reveals anomalous behavior at both 110 and 300 K: Surface periodicity is observed by LEED, and a significant increase in the number of bilayer step edges and energetically unfavorable monolayer steps is observed by STM. It is suggested that the newly exposed monolayer steps and the type A bilayer step edges result in an increase to the surface Fermi density as evidenced by UPS measurements and the Kohn-Sham DOS. These states appear to be thermodynamically stable under UHV conditions.