Influence of SiH4 deposition on the Si(111) 1 x 1-->7 x 7 phase transition.

Abstract

The kinetics of the transition from the high-temperature Si(111) 1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 phase to the 7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}7 reconstruction is affected by an external Si source, which retards the transition velocity significantly. The phase transition can be frozen at much slower cooling rates and on narrower terraces than without Si supply. Areas of a high-density 1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 and of a 7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}7 phase are observed by scanning tunneling microscopy after quenching across the transition on terraces of less than 2000 \AA{} in width. The 7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}7 domain size distribution follows a $\ensuremath{\Gamma}$ distribution, pointing to random nucleation and uniform growth rate of the domains on the terraces.