Abstract
The inhibition in wave propagation at band gap energies plays a central role in many areas of technology such as electronics (electron gaps), nanophotonics (light gaps) and phononics (acoustic gaps), among others. Here we demonstrate that metal surfaces featuring free-electron-like bands may become semiconducting by periodic nanostructuration. We combine scanning tunneling spectroscopy and angle-resolved photoemisssion to accurately determine the energy-dependent local density of states and band structure of the Ag/Cu(111) noble metal interface patterned with an array of triangular dislocations, demonstrating the existence of a 25 meV band gap that extends over the entire surface Brillouin zone. We prove that this gap is a general consequence of symmetry reduction in close-packed metallic overlayers; in particular, we show that the gap opening is due to the symmetry lowering of the wave vector group at the K point from C3v to C3.
Highlights
The inhibition in wave propagation at band gap energies plays a central role in many areas of technology such as electronics, nanophotonics and phononics, among others
We show that the gap opening and the evolution of the local density of states (LDOS) can be explained by symmetry
We show that group theory predicts a gap opening at this K point, but is able to give a satisfactory description of the LDOS associated with the high symmetry points of the BZ
Summary
The inhibition in wave propagation at band gap energies plays a central role in many areas of technology such as electronics (electron gaps), nanophotonics (light gaps) and phononics (acoustic gaps), among others. The symmetry group of the wave vector is C6v and the lowest energy band that corresponds to the plane wave state |k = 0 is associated with the totally symmetric irreducible representation A1g. The lowering of symmetry leads to an additional energy gap at the K point in the band structure, no matter what the sign of the superlattice potential V is.
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