  Thin PbTe films (thickness 500 - 600 angstrom), deposited on SrTiO3, have
been investigated by electric field effect (EFE). The high resistivity of such
thin films warrants a high sensitivity of the EFE method. The SrTiO3 substrate
serves as the dielectric layer in the Gate-Dielectric-PbTe structure. Due to
the large dielectric constant of SrTiO3, particularly at low temperatures, the
electric displacement D in the film reaches the high value of about 10^8 V/cm,
and the EFE introduced charge into the PbTe film amounts to ~ 8 microC/cm2. The
high D permits to measure the EFE resistance and Hall constant over a wide
region of D, revealing the characteristic features of their D-dependence. An
appropriate theoretical model has been formulated, showing that, for such
films, one can measure the dependence of the Fermi level on D. In fact, we
demonstrate that shifting the Fermi level across the gap by varying D, the
density-of-states of the in-gape states can be mapped out. Our results show,
that the PbTe layers studied, possess a mobility gap exceeding the gap of bulk
PbTe.
