Imaging of Atomic Columns in [110] Silicon

Abstract

The images of [110] silicon and other diamond-cubic materials recently pub-lished by Izui1 and others all show the crystalline lattice distorted: pairs of atomic columns which should be 1.36 Å (d400) apart are depicted as white dots separated by about 1.65Å. Two other puzzling features are that the images invariably show atoms as white rather than dark, and that the atomic columns are fully resolved only in thicker specimen regions, never near the specimen edge.