Scanning tunneling microscopy and the electronic and structural properties of intercalated graphite surfaces.

We present a theory of the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images of intercalated graphite surfaces. The corrugation amplitude (CA) and carbon-site asymmetry (CSA) are sensitive to the number m of graphite layers covering the first guest layer, to the amount of transferred charge and its distribution, and to the surface subband structure. The CA and CSA can be used to map the stage domains across a freshly cleaved surface. The CSA has a surprising dependence on the charge transfer and on m. We explain the unusual absence of atomic-scale features in the STM images of BiCs-graphite recently reported by Gauthier et al. [J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 6, 360 (1988)].