Stability of Vicinal Surfaces: Beyond the Quasistatic Approximation

Laurent Guin (1) , Michel E Jabbour (1) , Léopold Shaabani Ardali (2, 3) , Lucas Benoit-Marechal (1) , Nicolas Triantafyllidis (1)

1 LMS - Laboratoire de mécanique des solides
2 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique
3 DAAA, ONERA, Université Paris Saclay [Meudon]

We revisit the step bunching instability without recourse to the quasistatic approximation and show that the stability diagrams are significantly altered, even in the low-deposition regime where it was thought sufficient. In particular, steps are unstable against bunching for attachment-detachment limited growth. By accounting for the dynamics and chemical effects, we can explain the onset of step bunching in Si(111)−(7×7) and GaAs(001) without resort to the inverse Schwoebel barrier or step-edge diffusion. Further, the size-scaling analysis of step-bunch growth, as induced by these two combined effects, agrees with the bunching regime observed at 750 °C in Si(111)−(7×7).

Domaines: Mécanique des solides [physics.class-ph]; Matière Condensée [cond-mat]; Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]

Laurent Guin, Michel E Jabbour, Léopold Shaabani Ardali, Lucas Benoit-Marechal, Nicolas Triantafyllidis. Stability of Vicinal Surfaces: Beyond the Quasistatic Approximation. Physical Review Letters, 2020, ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.036101⟩. ⟨hal-02400748⟩