Modeling Interfaces A Retrospective

This chapter has argued for the critical role of interfacial defects in solids. We have favored an artificial classification into three primary types of interfacial defects, namely, surfaces, stacking faults and twins, and grain boundaries. In each of these cases, it has been argued that a continuum description of the energetics of such 

Ultimately, this ranking of energies could be rationalized on the basis of bond counting arguments in which we examine the extent to which atoms in the interfacial region have lost their partners. 

The Physics of Low-Dimensional Semiconductors by John H. Davies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge England, 1998. Chapter 4 of Davies book considers the properties of quantum wells and elaborates on some of the arguments concerning confinement given earlier in the present chapter. 

The literature on surface science is vast, and well represented in a number of different books and review articles. Here I give a few that have been most useful or enjoyable to me. 

Two complementary articles related to semiconductor surfaces are Scanning tunnelling microscopy of semiconductor surfaces by H. Neddermeyer, in Rep. Prog. Phys., 59, 701 (1996) and Theory of semiconductor surface reconstruction by G. P. Srivastava, in Rep. Prog. Phys., 60, 561 (1997). The article on scanning tunneling microscopy applied to semiconductor surfaces is replete with pictures of some of the huge variety of surfaces that have been considered in semiconductor systems. 

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