Electronic structure and electron dynamics at Si(100)

Abstract

The electronic structure and electron dynamics at a Si(100) surface is studied by two-photon photoemission (2PPE). At 90 K the occupied Dup dangling-bond state is located 150±50 meV below the valence-band maximum (VBM) at the center of the surface Brillouin zone Γ and exhibits an effective hole mass of (0.5±0.15)me. The unoccupied Ddown band has a local minimum at Γ at 650±50 meV above the VBM and shows strong dispersion along the dimer rows of the c(4×2) reconstructed surface. At 300 K the Ddown position shifts comparable to the Si conduction-band minimum by 40 meV to lower energies but the dispersion of the dangling-bond states is independent of temperature. The surface band bending for p-doped silicon is less than 30 meV, while acceptor-type defects cause significant and preparation-dependent band bending on n-doped samples. 2PPE spectra of Si(100) are dominated by interband transitions between the occupied and unoccupied surface states and emission out of transiently and permanently charged surface defects. Including electron–hole interaction in many-body calculations of the quasi-particle band structure leads us to assign a dangling-bond split-off state to a quasi-one-dimensional surface exciton with a binding energy of 130 meV. Electrons resonantly excited to the unoccupied Ddown dangling-bond band with an excess energy of about 350 meV need 1.5±0.2 ps to scatter via phonon emission to the band bottom at Γ and relax within 5 ps with an excited hole in the occupied surface band to form an exciton living for nanoseconds.