Image of the Month

September 2006

Cl-induced etching of Si(100)-(2×1)

iotm-september-2006

Microscope:
Omicron STM1

Controls: 
SPM 1000 Control System

Cl-induced etching of Si(100)-(2×1) under conditions of super-saturation. A saturated surface was heated to 800 K while being exposed to a Cl2 flux to facilitate Cl insertion into dimer bonds. The dark lines are etch pits in the top layer that were produced by a new reaction pathway

Courtesy of Abhishek Agrawal, R.E. Butera, and J.H. Weaver, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois