SN-INDUCED SURFACE RECONSTRUCTIONS ON THE GE(111) SURFACE STUDIED WITH SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPY

• Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been used to study different Sn induced reconstructions on the Ge(111) surface; namely the (7 x 7), (5 x 5) and (square-root 3 x square-root 3)R30-degrees structures. The first two have been confirmed to be of the dimer adatom stacking fault (DAS) type with adatoms mainly being Sn. The (square-root 3 x square-root 3)R30-degrees superstructure was found at different Sn depositions. At 0.4 monolayer (ML) Sn coverage a homogeneous Sn adatom layer is adsorbed on the (1 x 1) surface in threefold sites directly over second-layer atoms (T4), while at low coverage, 0.1 ML, the top layer is a mixture of Sn and Ge atoms. We also propose the chemical identities of the different atoms seen in the STM images as related to their apparent height.

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