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Published on: December 4, 2014
Atomic scale imaging and spectroscopy of a CuO(2) plane at the surface of Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+delta)
1Department of Physics and Fredrick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Abstract:
We have used a scanning tunneling microscope to demonstrate that a single CuO2 plane can form a stable and atomically ordered layer at the surface of Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+delta). In contrast to previous studies on high-T(c) surfaces, the CuO2-terminated surface exhibits a strongly suppressed tunneling conductance at low voltages. We consider a number of different explanations for this phenomena and propose that it may be caused by how the orbital symmetry of the CuO2 plane's electronic states affects the tunneling process.
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