Kink-induced buckled dimers on Si(001) and Ge(001) at room temperature studied by scanning tunneling microscopy

Detailed analysis of scanning tunneling microscopy images of the Si(001) reconstructed surface with buckled dimers

“…2(a) and 2(c). 6 This reversal is also observed on the terrace for the Si(001)-c(4×2) surface at low temperatures. 3,4 Inside one buckled dimer in Fig.…”

“…5 However, detailed observation of the S A steps has not been exhaustively carried out, since filledand empty-state images at only a few bias voltages have been reported. 6 It is known that STM images reflect electronic structures rather than atomic geometries. Consequently, biasdependent STM images result from the variation of the spatial distribution of the local density of states (LDOS) which is a function of energy.…”

Atomically Resolved Local Variation of the Barrier Height of the Flip-Flop Motion of Single Buckled Dimers of Si(100)

“…This effect leads to a strong-and longranged correlation between the configuration of the dimers. Defects, steps, and impurities disturb this ordering, and, as a result, the local characteristics (configuration, phase transition temperature, and electronic structure) of the surface show a strong atomic scale local fluctuation [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. For example, the S A steps are reported to suppress the symmetric-buckled phase temperature observed around 200 K [6].…”

Determination of Ge(001) step free energies

“…Most of the step-edge dimers ͑especially S A step-edge dimers͒ are buckled. 12 On the terraces, however, both buckled and unbuckled dimers are found. These unbuckled dimers are most probably dimers that are rapidly switching between the two buckled configurations.…”