Scanning tunneling microscopic studies of laser-induced modifications of Si(001)-(2 × 1) surface

Abstract

Scanning tunneling microscopic studies of Si(001)-2 × 1 surfaces excited with 532-nm laser pulses of intensities below melting and ablation thresholds have revealed two different modes of structural modifications, strongly depending on the intensity of laser lights. The excitation below 100 mJ/cm2 causes bond rupture at individual dimer-sites leading to the formation of vacancies selectively on the outermost layer. The bond rupture, which shows a strongly site-sensitive rate, forms efficiently vacancy-strings elongated along the surface dimer-rows. Selective removal of surface dimers results in the exposure of flat and defect-less underlying layer as reported previously, which is resistive to the excitation at this range of intensity. At intensities above 100 mJ/cm2, on the other hand, the excitation forms not only vacancies but also ad-dimers on terraces. The number density of ad-dimers is in proportion to the square of that for vacancies, indicating strongly that silicon atoms released by laser-induced bond rupture are associated with each other to form ad-dimers. The repeated irradiations at this range of intensities induce anisotropic growth of ad-dimer islands and of vacancy clusters on terrace regions, leading to multiply terraced structure. The primary processes of the structural modifications are discussed based on the quantitative analyses of the growth of vacancy and ad-dimer under excitation.