CPM Seminar

We have recently been able to fabricate nanowires on Silicon (111) surfaces that are only two atoms wide. The wires are grown in a regular array with a wire-to-wire spacing of 13.3 Angstroms. This nanowire system belongs to a class of quasi-1D overlayer systems that stabilise on Si(111). We are studying these systems because they appear, unlike many bulk quasi-1D systems, to be inert to both photon and electron beams. Therefore, they are ideal systems to study electron-electron correlations in 1D using surface sensitive spectroscopies. Furthermore, it makes a lot of sense to study the class of naturally occurring nanowires systems that can br grown on low index Silicon surfaces before attempting to fabricate nanoscale wires in nanoelectronic devices. In this talk I will discuss the novel image state that we have recently discovered above the array of nanowires. The array of nanowires has a lower symmetry than an atomically ordered metal surface where image states are normally observed. I will also briefly discuss the progress we have made constructing a novel STM to perform atom resolved imaging of the nanowires systems by selectively tunneling into the image state generated by the In nanowire.

Thursday, September 23rd 1999, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, 114