ANISOTROPIC VACANCY KINETICS AND SINGLE-DOMAIN STABILIZATION ON SI(100)-2X1

Preferential annihilation of mobile surface vacancies at the ends, rather than the sides of dimer rows leads to a new, nonequilibrium, single-domain phase of Si(100) that is not accessible by epitaxial growth but is stable at moderate temperatures (T approximately 450-degrees-C). These results emerge from a tunneling microscope study of layer-by-layer removal of Si from Si(100) under 225-eV Xe-ion bombardment.