AVS 47th International Symposium
    Material Characterization Friday Sessions
       Session MC+NS-FrM

Paper MC+NS-FrM5
Visualizing Interfacial Structure at Non-Common-Atom Heterojunctions with Cross-Sectional Scanning Tunneling Microscopy@footnote 1@

Friday, October 6, 2000, 9:40 am, Room 207

Session: Characterization of Interfaces and Thin Films
Presenter: J. Steinshnider, Texas A&M University
Authors: J. Steinshnider, Texas A&M University
M. Weimer, Texas A&M University
R. Kaspi, Air Force Research Laboratory
G.W. Turner, Lincoln Laboratory, M.I.T.
Correspondent: Click to Email
We describe how scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) may be used to image the interfacial bonding across the nearly-lattice-matched, non-common-atom GaSb / InAs heterojunction with atomic-scale precision. An ideal, compositionally-abrupt GaSb / InAs interface introduces new bonds - either InSb-like or GaAs-like - whose natural lengths differ from those in the surrounding host materials. These bond length differences are readily distinguished following (110) cleavage of the heterojunction, which locally relieves the out-of-plane compressive or tensile strain otherwise accommodated by a lattice-mismatched interface. The method is equally applicable to AlSb / InAs and suggests how it might be possible to determine the interfacial structure of such non-common-atom heterojunctions from atomic-resolution STM data.@FootnoteText@@footnote 1@Work supported by the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research, and the Air Force Research Laboratory