Formation and annihilation of various stacking-fault half units in dimer-adatom-stacking-fault structures on quenched Si(111) surfaces

The formation and annihilation of a stacking-fault (SF) half unit in dimer- adatom-stacking-fault (DAS) structure on the Si(111) surface have been inve stigated quantitatively by the scanning tunneling microscopy observations o f the quenched surface at several temperatures ranging from 380 to 500 degr ees C. It has been revealed that the formation rate of the SF half unit inc reases with the number of corner holes shared with the preexisting DAS doma in and decreases with the size of the SF half unit. The annihilation of the SF half unit sharing one corner hole becomes more frequent than its format ion at higher temperatures. From the Arrhenius plots, the activation energi es for the formation and the annihilation have been deduced to be around 1. 5-1.7 eV and 2.4 eV, respectively.