Related papers: New mechanism for impurity-induced step bunching
In order to study the unstable step motion on vicinal crystal surfaces we devise vicinal Cellular Automata. Each cell from the colony has value equal to its height in the vicinal, initially the steps are regularly distributed. Another array…
We propose a one-dimensional model based on the Burton-Cabrera-Frank equations to describe the electromigration-induced step bunching instability on vicinal surfaces. The step drift resulting from atomic evaporation and/or deposition is…
We model an apparent instability seen in recent experiments on current induced step bunching on Si(111) surfaces using a generalized 2D BCF model, where adatoms have a diffusion bias parallel to the step edges and there is an attachment…
We report numerical results for two models of vicinal motion. The first, LW, aims at crystal evaporation when the detachment from steps is slow [Liu and Weeks, PRB 57, 23 (1998) 14891]. The source of destabilization is electromigration…
Controlling topological phases is a central goal in quantum materials and related fields, enabling applications such as robust transport and programmable edge states. Here we uncover a mechanism in which local on-site impurities act as…
With a Si(001) vicinal surface in mind, we study step wandering instability on a vicinal surface with an anisotropic surface diffusion whose orientation dependence alternates on each consecutive terrace. In a conserved system step wandering…
Bunching and meandering instability of steps at the 4H-SiC(0001) surface is studied by the kinetic Monte Carlo simulation method. Change in the character of step instability is analyzed for different rates of particle jumps towards step. In…
The effect of impurities on epitaxial growth in the submonolayer regime is studied using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a two-species solid-on-solid growth model. Both species are mobile, and attractive interactions among adatoms and…
We approach the old-standing problem of vicinal crystal surfaces destabilized by step-down and step step-up currents from a unified modelling viewpoint with focus on both the initial and the intermediate stages of the instability. We…
Two kinds of configurations involving steps on surfaces are reviewed. The first one results from an initially planar vicinal surface, i.e. slightly deviating from a high-symmetry (001) or (111) orientation. In some cases, these surfaces…
Taking advantage of vicinal (001) SrTiO3 substrates with different mean terrace widths, the heteroepitaxial growth of SrRuO3 in the step flow mode has been mapped as a function of mean step velocity. Transition between stable and unstable…
We use kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to understand growth- and etching-induced step bunching of 6H-SiC{0001} vicinal surfaces oriented towards [1-100] and [11-20]. By taking account of the different rates of surface diffusion on three…
Electromigration-induced step bunching in the presence of sublimation or deposition is studied theoretically in the attachment-limited regime. We predict a phase transition as a function of the relative strength of kinetic asymmetry and…
We study step bunching under conditions of attachment/detachment limited kinetics in the presence of a deposition or sublimation flux, which leads to bunch motion. Analysis of the discrete step dynamics reveals that the bunch velocity is…
Step pattern stability of the vicinal surfaces during growth was analyzed using various surface kinetic models. It was shown that standard analysis of the vicinal surfaces provides no indication on the possible step coalescence and…
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…
A range of technologies require the directed motion of nanoscale droplets on solid substrates. A way of realizing this effect is durotaxis, whereby a stiffness gradient of a substrate can induce directional motion without requiring an…
The morphology of a growing crystal surface is studied in the case of an unstable two-dimensional step flow. Competition between bunching and meandering of steps leads to a variety of patterns characterized by their respective instability…
The interaction of two resonant impurities in graphene has been predicted to have a long-range character with weaker repulsion when the two adatoms reside on the same sublattice and stronger attraction when they are on different…
More physics at the boundaries of a topological lattice remains to be explored for future applications of topological edge states. This work investigates the stability of topological edge states in the presence of a moving impurity. By…