Atomistic investigation of surface characteristics and electronic features at high-purity FeSi(110) presenting interfacial metallicity.

ABSTRACT: Iron silicide (FeSi) is a fascinating material that has attracted extensive research efforts for decades, notably revealing unusual temperature-dependent electronic and magnetic characteristics, as well as a close resemblance to the Kondo insulators whereby a coherent picture of intrinsic properties and underlying physics remains to be fully developed. For a better understanding of this narrow-gap semiconductor, we prepared and examined FeSi(110) single-crystal surfaces of high quality. Combined insights from low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory calculations (DFT) indicate an unreconstructed surface termination presenting rows of Fe-Si pairs. Using high-resolution tunneling spectroscopy (STS), we identify a distinct asymmetric electronic gap in the su

SUBMITTER: Yang B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8092403 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature