Halogen etching of Si(100) surfaces has long been considered to involve the selective removal of atoms from an essentially static surface. Here it was shown that vacancy sites produced by etching were mobile at elevated temperature and rearrange to form features that were considered to be the direct products of etching. It was demonstrated that the etch features observed at different temperatures were not due to different mechanisms. Rather, kinetic etch products formed at low temperatures were transformed into thermodynamically more stable features at higher temperatures.

Vacancy Dynamics and Reorganization on Bromine-Etched Si(100)-(2 x 1) Surfaces. C.F.Herrmann, J.J.Boland: Physical Review Letters, 2001, 87[11], 115503 (4pp)