The tunnelling microscopy of (100) surfaces after 200eV Xe+ bombardment at various temperatures revealed the atomic geometries and relative stabilities of surface defects which were created by low-energy sputtering. Both adatoms and vacancies were created by incident ions. At temperatures above 370C, the mutual annihilation of adatoms and vacancies which formed during sputtering permitted layer removal without adatom island formation. The metastability of decorated antiphase boundaries was suggested to be responsible for the formation and persistence of long narrow islands and rough step edges on sputtered surfaces after annealing at temperatures of up to 700C.

P.Bedrossian: Surface Science, 1994, 301[1-3], 223-32