Electron bound states in the vicinity of two orthogonal surfaces.

Abstract

In a number of physical systems, it has been shown that there are electron bound states on a surface due to a potential well created by the interaction of the electron with its image and a potential barrier or a band gap keeping the electron out of the interior of the solid or liquid. We consider a configuration of two orthogonal solid surfaces and determine the binding energies and the wave functions of an electron that is in the vicinity of the corner. Our calculations indicate that the presence of the second surface gives a corner state, extended along the intersection of two surfaces, whose energy is below that of the plane-surface case, for both dielectric and metal surfaces.