Image charge effect on the light emission of rutile TiO2(110) induced by a scanning tunneling microscope**Project supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant Nos. 2016YFA0300901 and 2017YFA0205003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11634001 and 21725302), and the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDPB08-1).

Abstract

The plasmon-enhanced light emission of rutile TiO2(110) surface has been investigated by a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM). We found that the photon emission arises from the inelastic electron tunneling between the STM tip and the conduction band or defect states of TiO2(110). In contrast to the Au(111) surface, the maximum photon energy as a function of the bias voltage clearly deviates from the linear scaling behavior, suggesting the non-negligible effect of the STM tip on the band structure of TiO2. By performing differential conductance (dI/dV) measurements, it was revealed that such a deviation is not related to the tip-induced band bending, but is attributed to the image charge effect of the metal tip, which significantly shifts the band edges of the TiO2(110) towards the Femi level (EF) during the tunneling process. This work not only sheds new lights onto the understanding of plasmon-enhanced light emission of semiconductor surfaces, but also opens up a new avenue for engineering the plasmon-mediated interfacial charge transfer in molecular and semiconducting materials.