ATOMIC STEPS ON A SILICON(001) SURFACE TILTED TOWARD AN ARBITRARY DIRECTION

In this letter, we show that the misorientation of a vicinal (001) sur face annealed in hydrogen is accommodated by a pair of near-S-a steps which are evolved in two perpendicular {110} independently and coordin ately, We demonstrate that the deviation of surface orientation in a t iny area can be readily evaluated by inspecting the local variation of the near-S-a step pair, We finally indicate that the atomic steps on a surface annealed in argon exhibit in contrast, no conformity with th e misorientation towards an azimuth other than {110}. (C) 1996 America n Institute of Physics.