Si(001) Step Dynamics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 2710 (1995).
Chris Pearson, Brian Borovsky, Michael Krueger, Robert Curtis, and Eric Ganz
We used a scanning tunneling microscope to
study the dynamics of step edges on the Si(001)-(2x1)
reconstructed surface at temperatures from 520 to 700 K. We count
changes in step edge position to determine the rates of
attachment and detachment events which occur in units of four Si
atoms (two dimers). Surface mass transport at these temperatures
is dominated by kink diffusion. From an Arrhenius plot we find
the effective activation energy for kink diffusion to be 0.97 ± 0.12 eV
with a prefactor of 3x105 s -1
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