Scanning tunneling microscopy revealed a quasi-one-dimensional periodic island structure on the clean Pt(110)-͑1 3 2͒ surface. The period is about 1500 Å. As indicated by several test experiments, the structure corresponds to the thermodynamic equilibrium. This spontaneous island formation is attributed to mesoscopic self-organization induced by the intrinsic surface stress. It is demonstrated that such mesoscopic structures allow determination of the absolute surface stress. The present result agrees with ab initio calculations. [S0031-9007(97)
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