Atomic wire fabrication by STM induced hydrogen desorption

We have studied the fabrication of silicon dangling-bond (DB) conductive wires by using the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to selectively desorb hydrogen atoms from a fully hydrogenated Si(1 0 0) surface. Whereas previous studies have focused on the hydrogen desorption mechanisms themselves, we have investigated here the quality of the produced DB wires. We have shown that several factors such as the writing speed, Peierls distortions and STM tip structure changes can strongly affect the regularity of the atomic DB wires. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.