Fundamentals and applications of selenium-passivated Si[100] surface

Surface states have been one of the fundamental problems in semiconductor technology since the Bardeen era. It is found that a Si(100) surface passivated with a monolayer of selenium can significantly reduce surface states. A number of applications are envisioned for this atomically-engineered surface, including low-resistance ohmic contacts for Si microelectronics, photovoltaics, and high-temperature electronics, interface engineering between high-k dielectrics and Si(100) for Si nanoelectronics, and suppression of surface recombination for Si photovoltaics. Experimental results for some of these applications are presented