Morphological symmetry breaking during epitaxial growth at grazing incidence
It is shown that, in submonolayer growth at off-normal incidence, even much less than 1% of transfer from the condensation energy of the deposited atoms into adatom motion is sufficient to induce a net adatom current from the illuminated edge of a two-dimensional island to the other edges, thereby breaking the island symmetry. Such a symmetry breaking phenomenon is most pronounced for deposition at grazing incidence. Comparison between our theoretical predictions and existing experimental results confirms the general validity of the model.
Zhong
J
Department of Physics, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996 and Solid State Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
Wang
E
Niu
Q
Zhang
Z