Related papers: Step bunching during Si(001) homoepitaxy caused by…
Codeposition of impurities during the growth of a vicinal surface leads to an impurity concentration gradient on the terraces, which induces corresponding gradients in the mobility and the chemical potential of the adatoms. Here it is shown…
We study current-induced step bunching and wandering instabilities with subsequent pattern formations on vicinal surfaces. A novel two-region diffusion model is developed, where we assume that there are different diffusion rates on terraces…
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…
Step meandering due to a deterministic morphological instability on vicinal surfaces during growth is studied. We investigate nonlinear dynamics of a step model with asymmetric step kinetics, terrace and line diffusion, by means of a…
Coarse-grained modeling of dynamics on vicinal surfaces concentrates on the diffusion of adatoms on terraces with boundary conditions at sharp steps, as first studied by Burton, Cabrera and Frank (BCF). Recent electromigration experiments…
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…
Square lattice gas models for heteroepitaxial growth are studied by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, in order to find a possible origin of anisotropic island shape observed in growth experiments of long organic molecules. When…
The displacement of a fluid by another less viscous one in a quasi-two dimensional geometry typically leads to complex fingering patterns. In an isotropic system, dense-branching growth arises, which is characterized by repeated…
It is shown that step moving to meet solution flow can be unstable against lateral perturbations. The instability of long-wavelength perturbations occurs at values of the solution flow intensity less than some critical value depending on…
We have performed Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation to study the effect of diffusion anisotropy and bonding anisotropy on island formation at different temperatures during the sub-monolayer film growth in Molecular Beam Epitaxy. We use simple…
A crystal surface which is miscut with respect to a high symmetry plane exhibits steps with a characteristic distance. It is argued that the continuum description of growth on such a surface, when desorption can be neglected, is given by…
Using the plane wave pseudopotential method we performed density functional theory calculations on the stability of steps and self-diffusion processes on Ag(100). Our calculated step formation energies show that the {111}-faceted step is…
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…
By carrying out Monte Carlo simulations,we study step bunching during solution growth. For simplicity, we consider a square lattice, which represents a diffusion field in a solution, and express the diffusion of atoms as the hopping of…
We examine the structure and the evolution of Ge islands epitaxially grown on vicinal Si(111) surfaces by scanning tunneling microscopy. Contrary to what is observed on the singular surface, three-dimensional Ge nanoislands form directly…
Starting from a detailed model for the kinetics of a step edge or island boundary, we derive a Gibbs-Thomson type formula and the associated step stiffness as a function of the step edge orientation angle, $theta$. Basic ingredients of the…
We consider the growth of a vicinal crystal surface in the presence of a step-edge barrier. For any value of the barrier strength, measured by the length l_es, nucleation of islands on terraces is always able to destroy asymptotically…
First-principles total-energy calculations of the H/Si(001)-2x1 surfaces reveals a dual diffusion process for the Si adatoms: single along the dimer row while pairing up across the row. The calculated diffusion barrier along the dimer row…
The experimental x-ray diffraction patterns of a Si$_{0.4}$Ge$_{0.6}$/Si(001) epitaxial film with a low density of misfit dislocations are modeled by the Monte Carlo method. It is shown that an inhomogeneous distribution of 60$^\circ$…
The surface orientation can have profound effects on the atomic-scale processes of crystal growth, and is essential to such technologies as GaN-based light-emitting diodes and high-power electronics. We investigate the dependence of…