A theory of ballistic electron emission microscopy is presented that incorporates constant-tunnel-current feedback and models the band-structure and space-charge effects on the electron transmission. The computation is beyond the effective-mass approximation but short of being from first principles. The transmission coefficient includes detailed symmetry treatments of the ⌫-, L-, and X-point semiconductor conduction channels and the three-dimensional k-space current injection dependency. This approach naturally leads to the inclusion of multiple current channels, i.e., simultaneous inclusion of several propagating and evanescent bands of various symmetry types. We investigate the effects of the model parameters on the I-V spectra and compare our predictions to experiment, yielding fairly good agreement. We also compare theoretical and experimental Au/GaAs͑001͒ dI/dV data and find that the L point does not contribute to an observable threshold and that the corresponding experimental feature is due instead to band-structure effects.
A theory of ballistic electron emission microscopy is presented that incorporates constant tunnel current feedback and models the band structure and space charge effects on the electron transmission. The computation is beyond the effective mass approximation but short of being from first principles. We compare theory and experimental Au/GaAs(001) dI/dV data and find that the L point does not contribute to an observable threshold and that the corresponding experimental feature is due to band structure effects.
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