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