Thermally Induced Crossover from 2D to 1D Behavior in an Array of Atomic Wires: Silicon Dangling-Bond Solitons in Si(553)-Au.

The self-assembly of submonolayer amounts of Au on the densely stepped Si(553) surface creates an array of closely spaced "atomic wires" separated by 1.5 nm. At low temperature, charge transfer between the terraces and the row of silicon dangling bonds at the step edges leads to a charge-ordered state within the row of dangling bonds with ×3 periodicity. Interactions between the dangling bonds lead to their ordering into a fully two-dimensional (2D) array with centered registry between adjacent steps. We show that as the temperature is raised, soliton defects are created within each step edge. The concentration of solitons rises with increasing temperature and eventually destroys the 2D order by decoupling the step edges, reducing the effective dimensionality of the system to 1D. This crossover from higher to lower dimensionality is unexpected and, indeed, opposite to the behavior in other systems.