HIGH-TEMPERATURE SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPY STUDY OF THE PHASE-TRANSITION OF 16-STRUCTURE APPEARING ON A SI(110) SURFACE

High-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (HTSTM) has been developed which enables distortionless observation of the dynamic behavior of surface atoms at high temperatures up to 900-degrees-C on an atomic scale, and it was applied to analyze the mechanism of reversible phase transition between the 16-structure and the 1x1 structure appearing on a clean Si(110) surface. It has been found that, at first, the reconstruction and destruction of the 16-structure begin on the unit-cell level along the [112] direction and then progress along the [111] direction as a whole in order to complete the phase transition. The direct observation of the reconstruction at high temperatures is very important to investigate the mechanism of crystal growth.