Kinetic step bunching during surface growth
Statistical Mechanics
2009-11-11 v1 Materials Science
Abstract
We study the step bunching kinetic instability in a growing crystal surface characterized by anisotropic diffusion. The instability is due to the interplay between the elastic interactions and the alternation of step parameters. This instability is predicted to occur on a vicinal semiconductor surface Si(001) or Ge(001) during epitaxial growth. The maximal growth rate of the step bunching increases like , where is the deposition flux. Our results are complemented with numerical simulations which reveals a coarsening behavior on the long time for the nonlinear step dynamics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0502227,
title = {Kinetic step bunching during surface growth},
author = {T. Frisch and A. Verga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0502227},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PRL