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We performed in situ conductivity measurements by multiple microscopic probes of Ag nanofilms grown on a periodic array of indium atomic wires on Si( 111). Within the investigated thickness range the transport properties differ markedly from the bulk case. The ratio between the in-plane conductivity along and perpendicular to the In wires is 1.4 for the 3 monolayer (0.7 nm) thick Ag film and approaches unity with increasing film thickness. The observed anisotropy at the initial stage of the film growth is far larger than expected from the quasi-one-dimensional quantum well electronic structure of the films and ascribed to the carrier scattering at the film/vacuum and film/substrate interfaces. Our findings show that an ordered monolayer inserted at the interface enables drastic changes of the transport behavior of the whole metal nanofilm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a study conducted to determine the atomic configuration and electronic band structure of Pt-induced nanowires on a Ge(001) surface by using scanning tunneling microscopy, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, and reflection high-energy positron diffraction. In the study, the periodicity of Ge dimer is observed at low temperatures and at high temperatures.

We measured the magnetoconductance of bare and √3×√3-Bi/Ag-terminated ultrathin Ag(111) films by the micro-four-point probe method as a function of the applied magnetic field. The experimental curves were analyzed by introducing the results of photoemission investigation and band-structure calculations into the Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka formula, in order to derive the characteristic fields of the two systems. The formation of the Rashba-type surface alloy was found to reduce the spin-relaxation time in the ultrathin film significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second harmonic generation (SHG) spectroscopy ubiquitously enables the investigation of surface chemistry, interfacial chemistry, as well as symmetry properties in solids. Polarization-resolved SHG spectroscopy in the visible to infrared regime is regularly used to investigate electronic and magnetic order through their angular anisotropies within the crystal structure. However, the increasing complexity of novel materials and emerging phenomena hampers the interpretation of experiments solely based on the investigation of hybridized valence states. Here, polarization-resolved SHG in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV-SHG) is demonstrated for the first time, enabling element-resolved angular anisotropy investigations. In noncentrosymmetric LiNbO_{3}, elemental contributions by lithium and niobium are clearly distinguished by energy dependent XUV-SHG measurements. This element-resolved and symmetry-sensitive experiment suggests that the displacement of Li ions in LiNbO_{3}, which is known to lead to ferroelectricity, is accompanied by distortions to the Nb ion environment that breaks the inversion symmetry of the NbO_{6} octahedron as well. Our simulations show that the measured second harmonic spectrum is consistent with Li ion displacements from the centrosymmetric position while the Nb─O bonds are elongated and contracted by displacements of the O atoms. In addition, the polarization-resolved measurement of XUV-SHG shows excellent agreement with numerical predictions based on dipole-induced SHG commonly used in the optical wavelengths. Our result constitutes the first verification of the dipole-based SHG model in the XUV regime. The findings of this work pave the way for future angle and time-resolved XUV-SHG studies with elemental specificity in condensed matter systems.

Atomic scale engineering of two-dimensional materials could create devices with rich physical and chemical properties. External periodic potentials can enable the manipulation of the electronic band structures of materials. A prototypical system is (3×3)-silicene/Ag(111), which has substrate-induced periodic modulations. Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements revealed six Dirac cone pairs at the Brillouin zone boundary of Ag(111), but their origin remains unclear [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 113, 14656 (2016)]. We used linear dichroism angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, the tight-binding model, and first-principles calculations to reveal that these Dirac cones mainly derive from the original cones at the K (K^{'}) points of free-standing silicene. The Dirac cones of free-standing silicene are split by external periodic potentials that originate from the substrate-overlayer interaction. Our results not only confirm the origin of the Dirac cones in the (3×3)-silicene/Ag(111) system, but also provide a powerful route to manipulate the electronic structures of two-dimensional materials.

Honeycomb structures of group IV elements can host massless Dirac fermions with nontrivial Berry phases. Their potential for electronic applications has attracted great interest and spurred a broad search for new Dirac materials especially in monolayer structures. We present a detailed investigation of the β_{12} sheet, which is a borophene structure that can form spontaneously on a Ag(111) surface. Our tight-binding analysis revealed that the lattice of the β_{12} sheet could be decomposed into two triangular sublattices in a way similar to that for a honeycomb lattice, thereby hosting Dirac cones. Furthermore, each Dirac cone could be split by introducing periodic perturbations representing overlayer-substrate interactions. These unusual electronic structures were confirmed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and validated by first-principles calculations. Our results suggest monolayer boron as a new platform for realizing novel high-speed low-dissipation devices.

We have succeeded in detecting metallic transport in a monatomic layer of In on an Si(111) surface, Si(111)-sqrt[7]×sqrt[3]-In surface reconstruction, using the micro-four-point probe method. The In layer exhibited conductivity higher than the minimum metallic conductivity (the Ioffe-Regel criterion) and kept the metallic temperature dependence of resistivity down to 10 K. This is the first example of a monatomic layer, with the exception of graphene, showing metallic transport without carrier localization at cryogenic temperatures. By introducing defects on this surface, a metal-insulator transition occurred due to Anderson localization, showing hopping conduction.

The electronic structure of ultrathin Ag(111) films covered with a square root(3) x square root(3)-Bi/Ag ordered alloy was investigated by means of spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Surface-state (SS) bands, spin split by the Rashba interaction, selectively couple to the quantum-well state (QWS) bands, originally spin degenerate, in the metal film. Gaps are found to open between QWS and SS with parallel spins, while free-electron-like QWS dispersions are observed for antiparallel spin configurations. The present results demonstrate that in a nonmagnetic metal film the spin degeneracy of the valence levels can be lifted by hybridization with Rashba-type SS bands.

The electronic structure of Ag(111) quantum well films covered with a (sqrt[3]xsqrt[3]) R30 degrees Bi/Ag surface ordered alloy, which shows a Rashba spin-split surface state, is investigated with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The band dispersion of the spin-split surface state is significantly modified by the interaction with the quantum well states of Ag films. The interaction is well described by the band hybridization model, which concludes the spin polarization of the quantum well states.

Temperature-dependent electron transport in a metallic surface superstructure, Si(111)sqrt[3] x sqrt[3]-Ag, was studied by a micro-four-point probe method and photoemission spectroscopy. The surface-state conductivity exhibits a sharp transition from metallic conduction to strong localization at approximately 150 K. The metallic regime is due to electron-phonon interaction while the localization seemingly originates from coherency of electron waves. Random potential variations, caused by Friedel oscillations of surface electrons around defects, likely induce strong carrier localization.

We report the energy dispersions of the highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMO)-derived bands of a pentacene (Pn) thin film, whose in-plane structure resembles closely that of the ab plane of a low-density bulk Pn phase. Our present photoemission result indicates that the overlap of the pi-orbitals of adjacent Pn molecules is larger than what was expected from theoretical calculations. Further, of the two HOMO-derived bands, the large dispersion width of the band with higher binding energy suggests that this one mainly contributes to the bandlike charge transport in a Pn crystal.

The in-plane energy dispersion of quantized states in an ultrathin Ag film formed on the one-dimensional (1D) surface superstructure Si(111)-(4 x 1)-In shows clear 1D anisotropy instead of the isotropic two-dimensional free-electron-like behavior expected for an isolated metal film. The present photoemission results demonstrate that an atomic layer at the film-substrate interface can regulate the dimensionality of electron motion in quantum films.

Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we investigate changes in the band dispersion of a free-electron-like surface state of [FORMULA: SEE TEXT], induced by adsorption of submonolayer Au adatoms. At room temperature, where the adatoms are in a two-dimensional adatom-gas phase, electrons are transferred from the Au adatoms to the substrate, shifting the surface band downwards and causing it to deviate from a parabolic dispersion. At 135 K where the Au adatoms are frozen at specific sites of the substrate, the band splits into two. This band splitting can be explained in terms of hybridization between the unperturbed surface band and the localized virtual bound states induced by the Au adatoms.

We have succeeded in measuring the resistance across a single atomic step through a monatomic-layer metal on a crystal surface, Si(111)(sqrt[3]xsqrt[3])-Ag, using three independent methods, which yielded consistent values of the resistance. Two of the methods were direct measurements with monolithic microscopic four-point probes and four-tip scanning tunneling microscope probes. The third method was the analysis of electron standing waves near step edges, combined with the Landauer formula for 2D conductors. The conductivity across a monatomic step was determined to be about 5 x 10(3) Omega(-1) m(-1). Electron transport across an atomic step is modeled as a tunneling process through an energy-barrier height approximately equal to the work function.

We have devised a "square micro-four-point probe method" using an independently driven ultrahigh-vacuum four-tip scanning tunneling microscope, and succeeded for the first time to directly measure anisotropic electrical conductance of a single-atomic layer on a solid surface. A quasi-one-dimensional metal of a single-domain Si(111)4 x 1-In had a surface-state conductance along the metallic atom chains (sigma(axially)) to be 7.2(+/-0.6) x 10(-4) S/square at room temperature, which was larger than that in the perpendicular direction (sigma(radially)) by approximately 60 times. The sigma(axially) was consistently interpreted by a Boltzmann equation with the anisotropic surface-state band dispersion, while the sigma(radially) was dominated by a surface-space-charge-layer conductance.