Proceedings of International Conf. on Defects in Semiconductors, Physica
B 273-274, 796 (1999).
Comparison of Electronic and Mechanical Contrast in Scanning
Tunneling Microscopy Images of Semiconductor Heterojunctions
R. M. Feenstra
Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
15213
Abstract
The use of cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to
study strain in semiconductor heterostructures is discussed. In
particular, intermixing between constituent heterostructure layers
leads to internal strains in the heterostructure, and these strained
regions are evident by displacement of the cleavage surface formed in
the STM study. A theoretical analysis is made of the magnitude of
electronic compared to mechanical contributions to the contrast of
STM images, from which it is found that the former are relatively
small, on the order of 0.1 angstrom, for typical
InxGa1-xAsyP1-y
heterostructures
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