interface was shown to be tunable by an electric-field effect, [10,11] leading to the discovery of gate-tunable exotic properties such as superconductivity, [11][12][13][14] magnetism, [15] and Rashba interaction, [16][17][18] which can be exploited in novel electronic and spintronic devices. [19] The intriguing conductivity arising between LAO and STO-both of which are wide band gap insulators with band gaps of 5.6 and 3.2 eV, respectively-was initially explained by the polar catastrophe model. [4,20] According to this model, a charge of 0.5 e − per square STO lattice parameter is transferred from the LAO surface to the STO side of the interface to prevent the electrical potential from diverging due to the polar stacking of LaO + and AlO 2 − layers. Figure 1a illustrates this behavior, in which a downward bending of STO bands near the interface creates a narrow potential well that accommodates and confines the transferred charge at the interface, forming the 2DEG. However, numerous reports have proposed alternative explanations for the origin of the 2DEG, including charge doping by oxygen vacancies and cation intermixing. [21][22][23][24][25][26] Interestingly, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies showed that a similar 2DEG can be stabilized on the bare surface of STO (001) cleaved under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions following ultraviolet (UV)-light irradiation. [27][28][29] The 2DEG in this case is an electron accumulation layer that screens the positively charged oxygen vacancy defects ( O 2 V + or O V ⋅⋅ in Kröger-Vink notation) formed near the surface. The positively charged oxygen vacancies donate charge (e − ) while also inducing downward band bending at the STO surface, providing a confining potential well for the doped electrons. This is illustrated schematically in Figure 1b and also in Figure 1c, where the 2DEG is shown to form from Ti 3d t 2gderived quantized states (subbands).Recent studies have employed a variety of techniques to generate a 2DEG on the STO surface, also based on oxygen vacancy formation, including in situ sputtering, [30] vacuum annealing, [31,32] and metal deposition. [33] However, the quantitative relationship between the surface and bulk electronic structures remains unclear in some of these studies, especially given that n-type conducting (Nb-doped) STO substrates are often used to permit ARPES measurements. [30][31][32] In these The emergence of a 2D electron gas (2DEG) on the (001) surface of oxygendeficient strontium titanate (SrTiO 3−δ ) is investigated. Using in situ soft X-ray spectroscopy and effective mass modeling, a series of quantitative band diagrams are developed to describe the evolution of near-surface and bulk carrier concentrations, downward band bending, and Fermi level along a lateral gradient of oxygen vacancies formed on SrTiO 3−δ by direct-current resistive heating under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Electrons are accumulated over a 3 nm region near the surface, confined within a potential well with saturated 300 meV downward band be...