Unstable dynamics of model vicinal crystal surfaces: Initial and intermediate stages

TL;DR

This paper investigates the initial and intermediate stages of vicinal crystal surface instability using a unified atomistic model, revealing universal scaling laws and stability conditions across different destabilization mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive atomistic model for vicinal crystal surface instability, encompassing both sublimation and growth, and identifies universal scaling behavior during instability development.

Findings

Universal surface self-similarity with N=2sqrt(T/3)

Stability diagrams for different destabilization mechanisms

Confirmation of scaling law with ODE models

Abstract

We approach the old-standing problem of vicinal crystal surfaces destabilized by step-down and step step-up currents from a unified modelling viewpoint with focus on both the initial and the intermediate stages of the instability. We develop further our atomistic scale model of vicinal crystal growth (Gr) destabilized by SD drift of the adatoms in order to account for also the vicinal crystal sublimation (Sbl) and the SU drift of the adatoms as an alternative mode of destabilization. In order to study the emergence of the instability we use the number of steps in the bunch (bunch size) N as a measure and probe with small-size systems the models stability against step bunching (SB) on a dense grid of points in the parameter space formed by the diffusion rate/step transparency, surface miscut and drift direction, for each of the four possible cases - Gr+SD, Gr+SU, Sbl+SD, Sbl+SU. The obtained stability diagrams show where the system is initially most unstable and provide a ground to study there the intermediate stages of the developed instability quantifying the surface self-similarity by the time-scaling of N. For each of the four enumerated cases we show that it reaches the universal curve N=2sqrt(T/3), where T is the time, properly rescaled with the model parameters. We confirm the value of the numerical pre-factor with results from a parallel study of models based on systems of ordinary differential equations (ODE) for the step velocity.