Confinement-Enhanced Electron Transport across a Metal-Semiconductor Interface

We present a combined scanning tunneling microscopy and ballistic electron emission microscopy study of electron transport across an epitaxial Pb/Si(111) interface. Experiments with a self-assembled Pb nanoscale wedge reveal the phenomenon of confinement-enhanced interfacial transport: a proportional increase of the electron injection rate into the semiconductor with the frequency of electron oscillations in the Pb quantum well