Dry etching characteristics and surface reconstruction of Cl/Si(1 1 3)

We present a detailed study of the interaction of chlorine with the Si(1 1 3) surface by means of scanning tunneling microscopy. Upon chlorine adsorption at a substrate temperature of 600 °C, the most prominent feature is the presence of (2×n) reconstructions with n=2, 3, 5, 7 or 9 in the order of decreasing chlorine coverage. A concurrent process is the rearrangement of step edges from an initially rough appearance to an atomically smooth configuration perpendicular to the [3 3 2̄] direction.