Fermi energy pinning behavior and chemical reactivity of the Pd/GaAs (110) interface

Abstract
The room‐temperature growth of the Pd/n‐GaAs (110) intimate interface has been studied by soft x‐ray core level photoemission spectroscopy. It is shown that Pd reacts with the GaAs surface forming an arsenide compound in which phase segregated Ga metal is included. In addition some As is segregated on the surface of this composite. Using deconvolution of the different core level contributions, the Schottky barrier height of this system is experimentally determined to be 0.9±0.05 eV. The pinning is attributed to the deeper level of the unified defect model.