Surface properties of Si from photoelectric emission at room temperature and 80 °K

The position of the Fermi level with respect to the energy bands at a semiconductor surface as well as changes in the work function can be determined from the energy distributions of photoelectrically emitted electrons. Prior studies involved the photoelectric yield spectrum and required assumptions concerning the photoelectric threshold; the present method is free of such assumptions. Measurements at room temperature indicate that the Fermi level lies 0.23 eV and 0.41 eV above the top of the valence band for degenerate p and n-type materials, respectively. These results confirm those of Allen and Gobeli¹). Cooling to 80 °K increases the work function of p-type material by 0.025 eV while that of n-type Si remains unchanged; the results show that the electron and hole gases in the surface states are degenerate. The density of surface states lies between 7 × 10¹³ and 10¹⁵ eV⁻¹ cm⁻². On the cesiated surface, the Fermi level lies 0.16 eV below the conduction band at room temperature and coincides with its bottom at 80 °K.