Semiconductor Surfaces

Abstract

Many kinds of semiconductor surfaces have been investigated up to now both theoretically and experimentally using various methods thanks to the engineering and industrial importance of these surfaces. Surface structures and methods for surface treatment of Si(111), Si(100), GaAs(110) and InP(110) surfaces can be particularly well investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), and other methods. Hence, it is easy to prepare well-defined surfaces from such semiconductor materials using reliable surface treatments and then compare NC-AFM images with established surface structure models. As a result, using such well-defined semiconductor surfaces, we can investigate imaging mechanisms, performances and functions of NC-AFM in detail. Semiconductor surfaces are therefore standard samples for NC-AFM experiments and hence very important for NC-AFM measurements that can even image insulators as well as semiconductors, metals, molecules and biomaterials.