SURFACE ENERGETICS AND THERMAL ROUGHENING OF AG(115) STUDIED WITH STMMOVIES

We present a high-speed scanning tunneling microscope (STM) study of t he energetics and the thermal roughening transition of the Ag(115) sur face. Using a statistical analysis of large numbers of STM images we d irectly determine the kink creation energy and the step interaction en ergy. From these two energies we predict the roughening temperature af ter the terrace-ledge-kink model of Villain et al. This prediction is compared with an experimental estimate of the roughening temperature, obtained from STM observations at elevated temperatures. In addition, we derive an interaction energy for two neighboring kinks.