Al-induced faceting of Si(113)

Adsorption of Al on a Si(113) substrate at elevated temperatures causes a faceting transition of the initially flat surface. The (113) surface decomposes into a quasi-periodic sequence of Al terminated (115)- and (112)-facets. The resulting surface morphology is characterized in-situ by reciprocal space maps obtained with in-situ spot profile analyzing low-energy electron diffraction and ex-situ atomic force microscopy. The periodicity length of the faceted surface increases with adsorption temperature from 7 nm at 650 °C to 80 nm at 800 °C. The stability of the Al terminated Si(112) surface is the driving force for the faceting transition.