Anti-Coarsening and Complex Dynamics of Step Bunches on Vicinal Surfaces during Sublimation

Abstract

A sublimating vicinal crystal surface can undergo a step bunching instability when the attachment-detachment kinetics is asymmetric, in the sense of a normal Ehrlich-Schwoebel effect. Here we investigate this instability in a model that takes into account the subtle interplay between sublimation and step-step interactions, which breaks the volume-conserving character of the dynamics assumed in previous work. On the basis of a systematically derived continuum equation for the surface profile, we argue that the non-conservative terms pose a limitation on the size of emerging step bunches. This conclusion is supported by extensive simulations of the discrete step dynamics, which show breakup of large bunches into smaller ones as well as arrested coarsening and periodic oscillations between states with different numbers of bunches.

26 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Nonlinear dynamics in one dimension: On a criterion for coarsening and its temporal law
• Dynamic phase transitions in electromigration-induced step bunching
• Electromigration-Induced Step Meandering on Vicinal Surfaces: Nonlinear Evolution Equation

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Non-conserved dynamics of steps on vicinal surfaces during electromigration-induced step bunching
• Dynamics of Desorption with Lateral Diffusion