Residual thermal desorption studies of Ga adatoms on trenched Si(5 5 12) surface

We present here the thermal stability studies of the room temperature adsorbed Ga/Si(5 5 12) interfaces in the monolayer coverage regime, using AES and LEED as in-situ UHV characterization probes. Ga grows in Stranski–Krastanov growth mode at RT on the 2 × 1 reconstructed Si(5 5 12) surface where islands form on top of 2 ML of flat pseudomorphic Ga, yielding a (1 × 1) LEED pattern for coverages of 1.2 ML and above. When this RT adsorbed Ga/Si(5 5 12) interface is annealed at different temperatures, initially the strained Ga adlayers relax by agglomerating into 3D islands on top of a single Ga monolayer with an activation energy of 0.19 eV in the temperature range of 200–300 °C. The remnant Ga monolayer with a sharp (1 × 1) LEED pattern desorbs at temperature >400 °C, yielding the (1 1 2)–6 × 1 and 2 × (3 3 7) sub-monolayer superstructural. Finally at 720 °C Ga completely desorbs from the surface and leaves the clean 2 × 1 reconstructed Si(5 5 12) surface. The studies demonstrate the richness of the atomically trenched high index Si(5 5 12) surface, in obtaining several anisotropic features that can be used as templates to grow self-assembled nanostructures.