We have used ab initio total-energy calculations to study the various
possible structures resulting from surface reconstruction of Si(001) s
urface due to half a monolayer coverage of adsorbed B. The ranking of
energies for the different structures considered can be attributed to
the concentration of strains. The structures that we find to have the
lowest energy are compared with the results of a recent scanning tunne
ling microscopy (STM) study. None of the structures, including those p
roposed by the authors of the STM work, accounts satisfactorily for th
e STM features reported.