Terrace-width distributions on vicinal Si(111)

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Date

1991

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Citation

Wang, Goldberg, et al, Terrace-width distributions on vicinal Si(111). Physical Review Letters, 65, 2430-2433, 1990.

Abstract

Using scanning tunneling microscopy, we have quantitatively characterized the configurations of steps on vicinal Si(111) surfaces misoriented by 1.2 degrees and 2.3 degrees towards the (1- 1- 2) direction. The measured terrace-width distributions are strongly peaked, consistent with predictions for thermally wandering steps. However, the distributions are much narrower than predicted for the simple terrace-step-kink model, indicating that the steps interact with energetic short-range repulsions. The magnitude of this energetic repulsion is gauged from a Gaussian fit to the data. The width of the distribution scales with step density as expected for repulsions which decay as the inverse square of step separation.

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