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Conservation of the lateral electron momentum at a metal-semiconductor interface studied by ballistic electron
C A Bobisch1, A Bannani, Yu M Koroteev
1Department of Physics, Center for Nanointegration Duisburg-Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, 47048 Duisburg, Germany. christian.bobisch@uni-due.de
Abstract:
We report on ballistic electron emission microscopy and spectroscopy studies on epitaxial (3-5 nm thick) Bi(111) films, grown on n-type Si substrates. The effective barrier heights of the Schottky barrier observed are 0.58 eV for the Bi/Si(100)-(2x1) and 0.68 eV for the Bi/Si(111)-(7x7). At the step edges of the epitaxial films a strong increase of the ballistic electron emission microscopy current is observed for Bi/Si(111)-(7x7), while no increase occurs for Bi/Si(100)-(2x1). These observations can be explained by the conservation of the lateral momentum of the electron at the metal-semiconductor interface.
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