Strongly spin-orbit coupled two-dimensional electron gas emerging near the surface of polar semiconductors.

We investigate the two-dimensional highly spin-polarized electron accumulation layers commonly appearing near the surface of n-type polar semiconductors BiTeX (X=I, Br, and Cl) by angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Because of the polarity and the strong spin-orbit interaction built in the bulk atomic configurations, the quantized conduction-band subbands show giant Rashba-type spin splitting. The characteristic 2D confinement effect is clearly observed also in the valence bands down to the binding energy of 4 eV. The X-dependent Rashba spin-orbit coupling is directly estimated from the observed spin-split subbands, which roughly scales with the inverse of the band-gap size in BiTeX.