Dresden 2009 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 62: Surface chemical reactions II

O 62.3: Talk

Friday, March 27, 2009, 11:45–12:00, SCH A01

Non-adiabatic energy dissipation in metal homoepitaxy — •Ulrich Hagemann, Kornelia Huba, David Krix, and Hermann Nienhaus — Experimental Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

The growth of metal films releases energies of typically a few eV per metal atom. By now, the energy is believed to be dissipated adiabatically by direct excitation of phonons. We present data which give strong evidence for the creation of electron-hole pairs during Mg homoepitaxy, i.e., for a non-adiabatic dissipation channel. To detect the generated hot charge carriers, large-area ultrathin metal film Mg/p-Si(001) Schottky diodes were fabricated. The homogeneous Schottky barrier height was determined as 0.52 eV and the reverse current could be reduced to below 1 nA at low temperatures. During exposure of the diodes to a thermal Mg atom beam internal currents in the 100 pA range are observed. The currents can be attributed to two mechanisms: first the internal exoemission process (chemicurrent effect) due to non-adiabatic energy dissipation and second the photocurrent due to the infrared radiation of the evaporator. By varying the evaporator temperature and the Mg film thickness the two current contributions can be distinguished. The chemicurrent during Mg homoepitaxy depends exponentially on the evaporation temperature yielding the Mg evaporation enthalpy of 1.3 eV. The strong exponential attenuation of the chemicurrent with increasing Mg film thickness further supports the concept of generation of ballistic charge carriers by the metal formation process.