Self-rearrangements of vicinal silicon surfaces

Vicinal silicon surfaces auto-organise in a very systematic way, creating s tepped surfaces and facets. The driving forces for these morphological chan ges are the intrinsic material properties governed by the need to minimise the surface free energy. Depending on their initial crystallographic orient ation (hkl) and the individual misorientation, very different final morphol ogies have been observed. Systematic changes in the surface morphology and the associated atomic surface structures can be studied in a very straightf orward way on concave-shaped silicon surfaces. These samples contain a wide range of polar misorientation angles and all azimuthal directions. In the present paper, we summarise previous results obtained with scanning tunnell ing microscopy on concave silicon samples with an initial (111) and (100) o rientation and additional measurements on Si(211) and (322). Some remarks o n the more open Si(110) surface will also be given. (C) 2000 Published by E lsevier Science B.V.