A study has been carried out of the stability of silicon surfaces when they are provided with a chemically bound solid‐solid interface. Stable surfaces have been obtained with the system silicon‐silicon dioxide when the oxide is thermally grown. This latter system has been studied in some detail. In this paper the following phases of our investigation are presented: (i) some aspects of the thermal oxidation process and properties of the oxide; (ii) the electronic properties of the resulting silicon‐silicon dioxide interface; (iii) the application of the process to devices and resulting device characteristics.

Energy distributions of the electrons inelastically scattered from the tungsten (110) surface for primary energies of 50–350 eV have been obtained using a modified LEED system. The information contained in these secondary electron energy distributions has been coupled with LEED patterns, thereby affording a more complete understanding of the electron scattering processes in the low-energy range. The physical processes contributing to the characteristic losses and other features observed in the energy spectra are discussed, and the expected behaviors are compared with experimental observations. LEED patterns are used to characterize sample-surface conditions.

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