THE ROLE OF 2ND-NEIGHBOR EFFECTS IN PHOTOEMISSION - ARE SILICON SURFACES AND INTERFACES SPECIAL

A widely used assignment scheme for Si 2p core-level photoemission stu dies of silicon oxidation relies solely on the formal oxidation state of the silicon. The tacit assumption of this assignment methodology is that second-neighbor effects have no measurable effect on observed Si 2p binding energies. In this letter, new experiments are combined wit h literature precedents to make the case that the second-neighbor effe cts play an important role in determining binding energy shifts. (C) 1 998 American Institute of Physics.