Photoemission Study of the Physical Nature of the InP Near-Surface Defect States

The physical nature of the InP near-surface defect acceptor and donor states are studied by using photoemission spectroscopy. It is found that the In/n-InP(110) interface band bending does not start until the In coverage reaches about 0.3 monolayer (ML), while the In/p-InP(110) band bending is almost saturated at 0.3 ML. The annealing effect on the band bending of clean cleaved n-and p-type InP(llO) surfaces is also studied. It is found that annealing of the clean surface creates an irreversible band bending effect on the p-InP(110), but the n-InP(110) almost does not show any band bending after low temperature annealing. Based on these two striking differences in the band bending behavior of n- and p-type InP, it is proposed that the physical nature of InP near-surface defect acceptor and donor levels may be different and that phosphorus vacancies are the cause of p-InP surface Fermi level pinning.