TRANSITION FROM ISLAND GROWTH TO STEP-FLOW GROWTH FOR SI SI(100) EPITAXY/

Scanning tunneling microscopy measurements during growth at high subst rate temperatures (500-800 K) an used to study the transition from two -dimensional island growth to step-flow growth of Si on Si(100). The p resence of surface reconstructions leads to complex behavior in the tr ansition region. In particular, the theoretically predicted transient growth mode, with an oscillatory behavior of the fractional coverages of each of the nonequivalent (1 x 2) and (2 x 1) reconstruction domain s, is found Comparisons of experimental results with kinetic Monte Car lo simulations show that the speed of biatomic step formation is relat ed to the growth rate-dependent sticking coefficients at the step edge s.