Browsing by Author "Gosálvez, M.A."

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Apparent activation energy during surface evolution by step formation and flow
    (2006-11-09) Gosálvez, M.A.; Cheng, D.; Nieminen, Risto; Sato, Kazuo
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    During growth and etching by step flow as examples of anisotropic surface processing the apparent activation energy of the growth/etch rate depends on orientation, increasing gradually as a principal, terrace-rich surface is approached. This behaviour is traditionally explained as a change in the dominating process from step propagation to island/pit nucleation. We show that the orientation dependence of the activation energy is actually the result of a traditionally disregarded temperature dependence in the number of active step sites and is not attributable to an increasing role of step nucleation nor to a purely geometrical decrease in the number of step sites. This modifies the traditional picture of the apparent energy for a principal surface and explains how the energy can be higher than, equal to or even lower than that for vicinal orientations.