It was noted that the stable Si-terminated (001) surface of 3C-type material exhibited a 2 x 1 reconstruction which was similar to Si(001) 2 x 1; but with a longer dimer bond length (0.249 rather than 0.240nm) that was due to a higher back-bond strength. Molecular dynamics simulations showed that the deposition of Si adatoms onto the (001) 2 x 1 surface of 3C-type material resulted in the formation of a series of missing dimer-row reconstructions of the form, h x 2; where h was equal to 7, 5, 3 with increasing Si ad-atom coverage. The basic building block for the h x 2 surfaces was a 2 ad-dimer unit. The Si surface atoms below missing Si ad-dimers between neighboring Si ad-dimer pairs remained dimerized, and rotated by 90. The most stable Si-terminated h x 2 structure was 3 x 2, which represented the closest-packed array of 2 ad-dimer units; with a dangling bond density of 0.67 per (001) 1 x 1 unit cell on 3C-type material.

M.Kitabatake, J.E.Greene: Applied Physics Letters, 1996, 69[14], 2048-50