Electron-induced H atom desorption patterns created with a scanning tunneling microscope: Implications for controlled atomic-scale patterning on H–Si(1 0 0)

Abstract

We have used scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to explore the details of single and multiple H atom desorption from the H–Si(1 0 0)-2 × 1 surface induced by the inelastic scattering of electrons from an STM tip. The desorption of pairs of H atoms from individual Si dimers is rarely observed. Two-H atom desorption most often involves pairs of dimers, in the same or adjacent rows. This suggests that recombinative H 2 desorption via an interdimer reaction pathway, like that observed recently under nanosecond laser heating, may also be operative for electron-induced excitation using STM. Repeatable fabrication of desired size-selected dangling bond (DB) clusters is also achieved. The single atomic precision of the fabrication is a result of the intrinsically unfavorable paired H atom desorption from a single dimer, but does not result from the spatial localization of excitation energy of the Si–H bond under the STM tip as suggested in previous studies.