Self-rearrangements of vicinal silicon surfaces

Vicinal silicon surfaces auto-organise in a very systematic way, creating stepped surfaces and facets. The driving forces for these morphological changes are the intrinsic material properties governed by the need to minimise the surface free energy. Depending on their initial crystallographic orientation (hkl) and the individual misorientation, very different final morphologies have been observed. Systematic changes in the surface morphology and the associated atomic surface structures can be studied in a very straightforward way on concave-shaped silicon surfaces. These samples contain a wide range of polar misorientation angles and all azimuthal directions. In the present paper, we summarise previous results obtained with scanning tunnelling microscopy on concave silicon samples with an initial (111) and (100) orientation and additional measurements on Si(211) and (322). Some remarks on the more open Si(110) surface will also be given. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.