A unified treatment of current-induced instabilities on Si surfaces
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-10 v1 Materials Science
Abstract
We introduce a simple two region model where the diffusion constant in a small region around each step on a vicinal surface can differ from that found on the terraces. Steady state results for this model provide a physically suggestive mapping onto kinetic coefficients in the conventional sharp-step model, with a negative coefficient arising from faster diffusion in the step region. A linear stability analysis of the resulting sharp-step model provides a unified and simple interpretation of many experimental results for current-induced step bunching and wandering instabilities on both Si(111) and Si(001) surfaces.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0403488,
title = {A unified treatment of current-induced instabilities on Si surfaces},
author = {Tong Zhao and John D. Weeks and Daniel Kandel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0403488},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett