Surface melting of vicinal Si(111) surfaces

We study the surface melting of vicinal Si(111) surfaces by means of the Mo nte Carlo simulation using empirical Tersoff-Dodson potential. The dependen ce of the atomic structures and the atomic dynamics on the temperature, the adatom coverage and the vicinal angle were calculated. Surface melting occ urred on Si(111) vicinal surfaces without Si adatom coverage, while surface melting on flat Si(111) surfaces occurred only with Si adatoms higher than the critical coverage. The melting behavior on vicinal surfaces was guile different, with or without Si adatom coverage. Without Si adatom coverage, surface melting started from the upper terraces of step edges after a finit e annealing time. With Si adatom coverage, the melting evolved homogeneousl y from the top layer in proportion to the annealing time. As the vicinal an gle increases, the critical temperature of surface melting lowers. In the l ateral distribution function of the melting layers, only the nearest-neighb or correlation is kept and the farther distance correlation is lost. Si ato ms in the melting layers move about along the surface with a diffusion coef ficient irrespective of the adatom coverage. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.