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Science 3 November 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5800, pp. 804 - 806
DOI: 10.1126/science.1132941
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Reports

Coherent Electronic Fringe Structure in Incommensurate Silver-Silicon Quantum Wells

N. J. Speer, S.-J. Tang, T. Miller, T.-C. Chiang*

Atomically uniform silver films grown on highly doped n-type Si(111) substrates show fine-structured electronic fringes near the silicon valence band edge as observed by angle-resolved photoemission. No such fringes are observed for silver films grown on lightly doped n-type substrates or p-type substrates, although all cases exhibited the usual quantum-well states corresponding to electron confinement in the film. The fringes correspond to electronic states extending over the silver film as a quantum well and reaching into the silicon substrate as a quantum slope, with the two parts coherently coupled through an incommensurate interface structure.

Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801–3080, USA, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 104 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801–2902, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: chiang{at}mrl.uiuc.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)