Step bunching with both directions of the current: Vicinal W(110) surfaces versus atomistic scale model
Materials Science
2018-01-31 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases
Chemical Physics
Abstract
We report for the first time the observation of bunching of monoatomic steps on vicinal W(110) surfaces induced by step up or step down currents across the steps. Measurements reveal that the size scaling exponent {\gamma}, connecting the maximal slope of a bunch with its height, differs depending on the current direction. We provide a numerical perspective by using an atomistic scale model with a conserved surface flux to mimic experimental conditions, and also for the first time show that there is an interval of parameters in which the vicinal surface is unstable against step bunching for both directions of the adatom drift.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1712.05041,
title = {Step bunching with both directions of the current: Vicinal W(110) surfaces versus atomistic scale model},
author = {Olzat Toktarbaiuly and Victor Usov and Cormac Ó Coileáin and Katarzyna Siewierska and Sergey Krasnikov and Emma Norton and Sergey I. Bozhko and Valery N. Semenov and Alexander N. Chaika and Barry E. Murphy and Olaf Lübben and Filip Krzyżewski and Magdalena A. Załuska-Kotur and Anna Krasteva and Hristina Popova and Vesselin Tonchev and Igor V. Shvets},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.05041},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
17 pages, 10 figures