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We used high-temperature scanning tunneling microsopy to observe, in real time, the step rearrangement induced by a (7×{}7) reconstructive phase transition on a vicinal Si(111) surface misoriented toward [1{} 1{}2]. A new transient step bunching is found between a high-temperature phase consisting of single-layer steps with nonreconstructed terraces and a low-temperature phase of a mixture of single- and triple-layer steps with (7×{}7) reconstructed terraces. The transient step bunching indicates that the free energy of the (7×{}7) reconstructed step edge is larger than that of the nonreconstructed step edge just below the phase transition temperature.
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Hibino et al. (1994) studied this question.
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