Xanes studies of III-V semiconductor surface passivation

Abstract

III-V semiconductor surfaces are known to be very reactive in air due to the presence of unsaturated dangling bonds (DBs). Native oxides are highly undesirable in many device applications. Remarkable progress has been made in recent years in the preparation of air-stable surfaces by wet chemical etching. XANES studies have shown that the stability of the passive surface is due to termination of surface DBs through the formation of an ordered overlayer selfassembled in chemical solutions. For a (100) InP surface, saturation of two adjacent DBs is achieved by the formation of In-S-In bridge bonds along the [011] direction. A refined analysis of σ-resonance indicates that XANES data are consistent with a recently proposed (2×2) InP(100)-S structure where the S is located on bridge sites to form twisted short and long dimers. For the GaAs(111) surface, the surface DBs are terminated by monovalent Ga-Cl bonds along the surface normal.