The sublimation of a heavily B-doped (111) surface was compared with that of a normal (111) surface under ultra-high vacuum. The step spacing during step-flow sublimation was used as a measure of the adatom diffusion length by means of some 50μ-wide (111) planes which were created at the bottoms of craters. On the heavily-doped 1 x 1 surface, the step spacing was smaller and the step-spacing transition (so-called incomplete surface-melting) temperature was 60º higher than that on the normal 1 x 1 surface. The results were explained in terms of the effect of B at S5 substitutional sites. At temperatures below 1100C, the sublimation of heavily-doped surfaces on wide terraces changed to a 2-dimensional vacancy-island nucleation mode.

Sublimation of a heavily boron-doped Si(111) surface Y.Homma, H.Hibino, T.Ogino, N.Aizawa: Physical Review B, 1998, 58[19], 13146-50