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While surface kinetics measurements for single atom diffusion have proliferated, little work exists attempting to measure surface dynamics under equilibrium conditions. We will present our recent work on developing Temporal LEED Spectroscopy (TLS) as a dynamic probe of surfaces capable of kinetics measurements at both high temperatures and surface coverages. By tuning the diffraction to specific structural entities such as steps, islands, etc., and monitoring the diffracted signal as a function of time, dynamics information about these structures can be obtained. As an example we will present TLS results for the dynamics of step fluctuations on Si(001) [1]. We have measured activation energies and identified step-edge diffusion as the rate limiting process for 950K < T < 1130K. Although this result is in apparent disagreement with earlier work, a careful analysis, considering crossover temperatures between different microscopic processes, can reconcile the differences. 1. M. Kammler, et al., Phys. Rev. B (in press).
As demonstrated with SPA-LEED and STM uniform height islands of preferred thickness form during the growth of Pb on Si(111). The islands form at temperatures T<250K and for fluxes F 1/60ML/sec which requires fast kinetics and balance between several atomic processes: diffusion towards the islands , diffusion to higher layers and preference for the atoms to remain on top of the preferred height islands. We have carried out SPA-LEED experiments to measure the barriers of the processes: we prepare an initial predominantly 5-step island height distribution and we deposit an additional 0.5ML Pb at different growth temperatures Tg to determine the transition to the next preferred height of 7-step islands (i.e. 2-step islands on top of the 5-step islands) with Spot Profile Analysis(SPA-LEED). We observe that 7-step island formation is possible above a minimum temperature Tg*=175K which indicates that the transfer of atoms from the surrounding region to the top of the islands is the main controlling process.