STM STUDIES ON SEMICONDUCTOR SURFACES AND METAL-SEMICONDUCTOR INTERFACES

In the last few years, a better understanding of the structural and electronic properties of surfaces at the nanometric scale has been achieved via S.T.M. characterisation. The aim of this paper is to report on surface physics experiments on Si surfaces and metal-silicon interfaces which have been carried out in our S.T.M. group in Marseille. The following systems will be discussed: Si(111); B/Si(111) square-root 3 x square-root 3 R (30-degrees); Sn/Si (111) square-root 3 x square-root 3 R (30-degrees); Ag/Si (111). Whereas achieving atomic resolution in structural studies of surfaces has long been the major goal since early S.T.M. work, we insist on the necessity of having in parallel an overview of the topography of the surface on rather large scan-windows. This kind of microscopy using S.T.M. has recently received attention on our group and allowed us to correlate the corrugation of the surface with the preparation procedure.