Hot scanning tunneling microscope study of B type step edges and small silicon islands on Si(001)

Abstract

We have used a scanning tunneling microscope to image step edges as well as small Si islands on the Si(001)-2×1 reconstructed surface at temperatures up to 700 K. We count the changes in the step edge configuration and extract activation energies for the dominant processes. We also observe fluctuations in Si island size at rates that are higher than those we observe on step edges. To aid visualization of the dynamics, we display consecutive images of fluctuating islands and step edges as movies.