Effect of beam energy and surface temperature on the dissociative adsorption of H2 on Si(001)

Dissociative adsorption of H2 from a high-flux supersonic molecular beam on flat and vicinal Si(001) surfaces was investigated by means of optical second harmonic generation (SHG). The initial sticking coefficients for terrace adsorption varied between 10−8 and 10−4. They revealed a strongly activated dissociation process, both with respect to the kinetic energy of the incident molecules (70 meV⩽Ekin⩽380 meV) and the surface temperature (440 K⩽Ts⩽670 K). The results indicate that dynamical distortions of Si surface atoms can lower the effective adsorption barriers from 0.8±0.2 eV to almost negligible values. Previously proposed defect-mediated processes can be ruled out as a major adsorption channel.