Exact location of dopants below the Si(001): H surface from scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory

Control of dopants in silicon remains crucial to tailoring the properties of electronic materials for integrated circuits. Silicon is also finding new applications in coherent quantum devices, as a magnetically quiet environment for impurity orbitals. The ionization energies and shapes of the dopant orbitals depend on the surfaces and interfaces with which they interact. The location of the dopant and local environment effects will therefore determine the functionality of both future quantum information processors and next-generation semiconductor devices. Here we match observed dopant wave functions from scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to images simulated from first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations and precisely determine the substitutional sites of neutral As dopants between 5 and 15 Å below the Si(001):H surface. We gain a full understanding of the interaction of the donor state with the surface and the transition between the bulk dopant and the dopants in the surface layer