Consideration on the quantitativeness of reflection high energy electron diffraction intensity as a tool to monitor the coverage of the Si(111) surface by 7x7 domains

The quantitativeness of reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) intensity as a high-speed tool to monitor nucleation and growth of 7 x 7 d imer-adatom-stacking-fault (DAS) domains on Si(111) surface rapidly quenche d from a high-temperature disordered 1 x 1 phase has been investigated by c omparing the time dependence of both RHEED intensity and scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images. The superlattice reflection intensity of RHEED no rmalized with that of uniform coverage increased gradually as a function of time after the quenching. The increase rate was higher at higher substrate temperature. A series of STM images revealed the transient aspect of the S i(111)7 x 7 reconstruction that a number of nuclei were randomly formed at the initial stage of growth, and the domain density decreased due to coales cence as the growth proceeded. The coverage by 7 x 7 DAS domains obtained f rom STM images was always higher than the normalized intensity of superlatt ice reflection, which showed that the intensity was reduced due to interfer ence between randomly located DAS domains.