Structural Study of the Si(553)-Au Surface

When gold is deposited onto the Si(553) surface, a highly ordered surface with a quasi-one-dimensional electronic structure can be prepared. This Si(553)-Au surface was investigated by surface X-ray diffraction to determine the surface structure. A structure model was constructed from the Patterson function of the experimental diffracted intensities. There is one gold atom in the primitive unit cell. It substitutes for a top-layer silicon atom on the terraces. The silicon atoms near the step edge reconstruct to form a honey-comb chain. [DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2009.533]