Electron-hole pair creation and metal/semiconductor interface scattering observed by ballistic-electron-emission microscopy.

Abstract

Ballistic-electron-emission microscopy (BEEM) is used to demonstrate experimentally that the creation of electron-hole pairs near the metal/semiconductor (M/S) interface significantly affects the scattering of the ballistic electrons with energy greater than the semiconductor-substrate energy gap. In addition, we observe that the derivative BEEM spectrum of Au/Si(001) (n-type) is rich with features which may correspond to either M/S interface states or to states in the semiconductor band gap near the interface. We suggest that these interface scattering processes occur also for other M/S systems.