Surface Induced Asymmetry of Acceptor Wave Functions

Measurements of the local density of states of individual acceptors in III-V semiconductors show that the symmetry of the acceptor states strongly depends on the depth of the atom below a (110) surface. Tight-binding calculations performed for a uniformly strained bulk material demonstrate that strain induced by the surface relaxation is responsible for the observed depth-dependent symmetry breaking of acceptor wave functions. As this effect is strongest for weakly bound acceptors, it explains within a unified approach the commonly observed triangular shapes of shallow acceptors and the crosslike shapes of deeply bound acceptor states in III-V materials.