Adsorption of sodium and its effect upon some electric properties of clean germanium (111) surfaces

The effect of adsorbed Na on the surface conductivity, Δσ, and surface recombination velocity, S, of a clean (114)Ge surface is studied. The surface conductivity is a complicated function of the surface Na concentration, N_Na; at N_Na ≈ 1.5 × 10¹³ atoms/cm², it has a minimum; at ca. (3–5) × 10¹⁴atoms/cm², it has a maximum. For a monolayer coverage (ca. 7.2 × 10¹⁴atoms/cm²) the values of Δσ are not much different from those of a clean Ge surface. The surface recombination velocity is a three-valued function of the surface potential, U_S (calculated from the Δσ values), depending on the Na overlayer coverage and heat treatment of the sample. Three different surface structures (LEED data) were found to correspond to the three S versus U_S curves reported here. Thermal desorption studies show that Na is desorbed in a wide temperature interval. Two peaks have been isolated, studied and discussed. At low coverages a single peak is found to exist, which obeys the first-order desorption kinetics, with a desorption energy of (52 ± 3)kcal/mol. This peak is attributed to the surface defects. For coverages close to$\text{1}\text{4}$ monolayer a new peak was observed in the spectrum. The desorption energy of this binding state exceeds that of all the other states. When the overlayer coverage is increased, this peak is shifted to higher temperatures, as predicted for a half-order desorption kinetics. By comparing also with LEED data, it may be concluded that this most tightly bound sodium has formed on the Ge(111) surface patches of an ordered structure in which one Na atom is bonded to three Ge atoms.