Low-energy electron microscopy was used to show that changing the temperature of O-deficient, rutile-structure crystals caused steps on the (110) surfaces to move. This motion occurred because the concentration of bulk O vacancies changed with temperature, requiring that material be added to or subtracted from the surface. During cooling below a bulk-stoichiometry-dependent temperature, the surface reconstructs into a 1 x 2 structure in the regions surface steps had swept through, showing that the structural and compositional changes needed to form the 1 x 2 phase were facilitated by the surface-to-bulk mass flow.

Role of Bulk Thermal Defects in the Reconstruction Dynamics of the TiO2(110) Surface. K.F.McCarty, N.C.Bartelt: Physical Review Letters, 2003, 90[4], 046104 (4pp)