Influence of arsenic on the atomic structure of the Si(112) surface

Abstract

The surface science techniques of low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) have been used to characterize the clean Si(112) surface and the influence of an As monolayer on the properties and structure of the surface. In agreement with previous studies, the clean surface is found by both LEEd and atomically resolved STM images to be unstable with respect to faceting into other stable planes. Procedures for in-situ deposition of As onto clean Si surfaces were devised and XPS results show that approximately one monolayer of As can be deposited free of any contamination. The As/Si(112) surface is characterized by a sharper LEED pattern than for the clean surface and by STM images characterized by long rows along the \([\bar 110]\) direction with a regular width of 1.9 nm. This is consistent with a doubling of the periodicity in the \([11\bar 1]\) direction of the bulk-terminated unit cell. This implies that As yields a stable but reconstructed Si(112) surface.