Meandering of monolayer stripes under electromigration.
The dynamics of lines composed of two monatomic steps of opposite sign and periodically spaced on a crystal surface has been investigated under electromigration. It is found that, when adatoms have a diffusion bias parallel to the step edges, lines may become unstable with respect to shape fluctuation, which may lead to the formation of a pattern composed of antiphase serpentinelike lines.
Colin
Jérôme
J
Department of Mathematics, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-3875, USA. jerome.colin@univ-poitiers.fr