Kinetics of anticrossing between slip traces and vicinal steps on crystal surfaces

Asymmetry of anticrossing between atomic steps on metal and semiconductor surfaces

“…The morphology of GaAs surface was studied ex-situ after the annealing in equilibrium with Ga and As vapors by means of atomic force microscopy (AFM). In gold studies, we used single crystals with (111) surfaces prepared following the technique described in [6]. The gold samples were mechanically strained in the "Nanoplast" apparatus [5] at the temperature T = 180 K and heated up to the temperature T = 300 K at which the evolution of surface morphology was studied in situ by scanning tuneling microscopy (STM).…”

“…The three-level relief consists of the upper and the lower terraces, indicated as 2 and 0 in figure 1 The apparent anticrossing effect between vicinal and dislocation-induced steps was observed on the Au(111) surface with the original experimental apparatus "Nanoplast", which allows one to study the evolution of surface morphology in situ by means of scanning tunneling microscopy under ultrahigh vacuum conditions and the increasing controlled strain (figure 2) [3,5]. The kinetics of step anticrossing on the Au(111) surface was experimentally investigated during the annealing at T = 300 K after the introduction of slip traces by the uniaxial compression of the crystal at T = 180 K [6]. It was observed that the width of the anticrossing bridge increased with time by the power law with exponent β = 0.45 ± 0.01.…”

“…Two issues remained open in the previous studies of the anticrossing phenomenon [3][4][5][6]. The first one concerns the experimentally observed asymmetry of the combinatory steps near the anticrossing region.…”

“…Two microscopic mechanisms contributing to the anticrossing relief evolution were considered: (1) atomic diffusion from the upper terrace across the bridge to the lower terrace, and (2) atomic diffusion along the combinatory steps. Using Monte-Carlo simulations, it was shown that the recombination mechanism dominates over the step diffusion (figure3).Two issues remained open in the previous studies of the anticrossing phenomenon[3][4][5][6]. The first one concerns the experimentally observed asymmetry of the combinatory steps near the anticrossing region.…”

Kinetically driven thermal roughening of semiconductor surfaces: experiment on GaAs and Monte Carlo simulation

“…The Schwöbel barrier impedes the exchange of atoms between an upper terrace and a step and, therefore, suppresses this diffusion mechanism and the entropic repulsion of the steps. For the extreme case of atomic steps 'anticrossing', the microscopic mechanisms of the entropic step repulsion were considered in [42].…”