Nanoscale hot electron transport across Cu/n-Si(100) and Cu/n-Si(111) interfaces

Ballistic electron emission microscopy (BEEM) has been used to investigate hot electron transmission, at the nanoscale, in thin films of Cu on Si(100) and Si(111). For all Cu thicknesses studied here, the BEEM transmission is observed to be twice larger for Si(111) than for Si(100). Further, the attenuation length in Cu is found to be larger for Si(111) than for Si(100) substrates, in spite of the highly textured growth of Cu on both the substrates. Our results can be explained by the incorporation of elastic scattering at the metal-semiconductor (M/S) interface as well as the increased availability of parallel momentum states at the interface. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinhei