Morphology of ledge patterns during step flow growth of metal surfaces vicinal to fcc(001)

Abstract

The morphological development of step edge patterns in the presence of meandering instability during step flow growth is studied by simulations and numerical integration of a continuum model. It is demonstrated that the kink Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier responsible for the instability leads to an invariant shape of the step profiles. The step morphologies change with increasing coverage from a somewhat triangular shape to a more flat, invariant steady state form. The average pattern shape extracted from the simulations is shown to be in good agreement with that obtained from numerical integration of the continuum theory.

arXiv comment4 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX 3, submitted to Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (6)

• Instabilities in crystal growth by atomic or molecular beams
• Island diffusion on metal fcc(100) surfaces
• Nonlinear evolution of step meander during growth of a vicinal surface with no desorption
• Instability and wavelength selection during step flow growth of metal surfaces vicinal to fcc(001)
• Asymptotic step profiles from a nonlinear growth equation for vicinal surfaces
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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Anisotropic dynamics of a vicinal surface under the meandering step instability