Dimer Coupling Energies of the Si(001) Surface

Abstract

The coupling energies between the buckled dimers of the Si(001) surface were determined through analysis of the anisotropic critical behavior of its order-disorder phase transition. Spot profiles in high-resolution low-energy electron diffraction as a function of temperature were analyzed within the framework of the anisotropic two-dimensional Ising model. The validity of this approach is justified by the large ratio of correlation lengths, ${\xi }_{\parallel }^{+}/{\xi }_{\perp }^{+}=5.2$ of the fluctuating $c(4\times 2)$ domains above the critical temperature $T_{\mathrm{c}}=(190.6\pm 10)$ K. We obtain effective couplings $J_{\parallel }=(-24.9\pm 1.3)$ meV along the dimer rows and $J_{\perp }=(-0.8\pm 0.1)$ meV across the dimer rows, i.e., antiferromagnetic-like coupling of the dimers with $c(4\times 2)$ symmetry.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication at Physical Review Letters on 02Feb23

References in corpus (4)

• A new LEED Instrument for Quantitative Spot Profile Analysis
• Order-disorder phase transition on the (100) surface of magnetite
• Thermally-induced crossover from 2D to 1D behavior in an array of atomic wires: silicon dangling-bond solitons in Si(553)-Au
• Anisotropic scaling of the two-dimensional Ising model I: the torus

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Critical behavior of the dimerized Si(001) surface: Continuous order-disorder phase transition in the two-dimensional Ising universality class
• Finite-time performance of a cyclic 2d quantum Ising heat engine
• Continuous Dimer Angles on the Silicon Surface: Critical Properties and the Kibble-Zurek Mechanism
• Kibble-Zurek dynamics in the anisotropic Ising model of the Si(001) surface