From meandering to faceting, is step flow growth ever stable?
Based on helium atom beam diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy data, the coexistence of a meandering and a bunching instability during homoepitaxial step flow growth is established in a class of nonreconstructed, metallic vicinal surfaces, Cu (1,1,n), n=5,9,17. Specifically, the meandering instability is shown to act as a precursor to the bunching instability, indicating that a one-dimensional treatment of bunching in step flow growth is not sufficient. Our findings might be generic to step flow growth in kinetically restricted systems.
Néel
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DSM/Drecam/Spcsi, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
Maroutian
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Douillard
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Ernst
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HJ