Electronic states at the surfaces of crystals

Abstract

It is shown that in a crystal there exist states in which the electron is bound to a surface of the crystal and has an energy lying within a forbidden band. The wave functions and energies of these states are calculated, on the nearly free electron approximation, in terms of the constants of the crystalline potential field, which is represented by a triple Fourier series having the periodicity of the lattice. The method is shown to be applicable to a general crystal having a surface parallel to any one of the crystal planes.