Electric-Field Gradients at Group-III Sites on GaAs and InAs (111)B Surfaces

Abstract

We report a comparison of electric-field gradients (EFGs) measured at the group-III sites on epitaxially-grown surfaces of 2×2-reconstructed GaAs and InAs crystals. For this purpose, we used ¹¹¹In→¹¹¹Cd perturbed-angular-correlation (PAC) spectroscopy. Sharp spectral lines characterize the perturbation functions corresponding to both surfaces. On GaAs surface, we observe only one well-defined nuclear electric-quadrupole interaction (NQI); and on the InAs surface, we observe a primary and a secondary NQI. Very similar but experimentally-distinguishable values of the EFG-parameters characterize the primary interactions corresponding to the GaAs and InAs surfaces. Specifically, for the GaAs and InAs surfaces, ω _Q =28.0±0.2 Mrad s⁻¹ and η=0.43±0.02 and ω _Q =28.8±0.2 Mrad s⁻¹ and η=0.39±0.02, and the angles between EFG z-axis and the (111) direction are 65°±3° and β=53°±3°, respectively. These unexpected results indicate that the so-called lattice contribution to the EFG is not significant. Moreover, for the primary NQIs on both surfaces, the similar parameter values demonstrate that chemical differences between the ¹¹¹In probe and the indigenous Ga surface atoms cause no large quantitative effects. This information indicates that impurity probes and PAC spectroscopy can be used effectively to investigate III–V surfaces.