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Insulator at the ultrathin limit: MgO on Ag(001)
S Schintke1, S Messerli, M Pivetta
1Institut de Physique de la Matière Condensée, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Physical Review Letters
|January 22, 2002
Abstract:
The electronic structure and morphology of ultrathin MgO films epitaxially grown on Ag(001) were investigated using low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. Layer-resolved differential conductance (dI/dU) measurements reveal that, even at a film thickness of three monolayers, a band gap of about 6 eV is formed corresponding to that of the MgO(001) single-crystal surface. This finding is confirmed by layer-resolved calculations of the local density of states based on density functional theory.