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Electron-stimulated athermal surface recrystallization of Si(100)

Low energy (<40 eV) electrons may be used to athermally release the compressive stress in a Si(100) surface layer induced by Ar+ ions (<100 eV) (Narushima et al 2001 Appl. Phys. Lett. 79 605). In particular, we have strong evidence that the stress relaxation depends only on the number of irradiated electrons. This indicates that complete relaxation is not promoted by a thermal activation mechanism, but by a non-thermal mechanism. In this letter, we show using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) that the underlying cause of the athermal surface stress relaxation is recrystallization of the surface atoms. Our STM observations show characteristic features to support our hypothesis. The electron-irradiated surface does not have the thermally generated 2 × 1 surface reconstruction, but instead a 1 × 1 reconstruction, which is slightly closer to the positions of a ‘bulk-terminated’ surface.