Surface instabilities in granular matter and ion-sputtered surfaces

TL;DR

This paper extends a theoretical framework from desert sand ripples to analyze surface instabilities in ion-sputtered materials, revealing common geometrical principles despite different physical mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a unified theoretical approach to study surface roughening and ripple formation in ion sputtering, inspired by aeolian ripple models.

Findings

Unified geometrical description of surface instabilities

Application of desert ripple theory to ion-sputtered surfaces

New insights into surface roughening mechanisms

Abstract

We apply a theoretical approach, originally introduced to describe aeolian ripples formation in sandy deserts, to the study of surface instability in ion sputtered surfaces. The two phenomena are distinct by several orders of magnitudes and by several physical mechanisms, but they obey to similar geometrical constraints and therefore they can be described by means of the same approach. This opens a novel conceptual framework for the study of the dynamical surface roughening and ripple formation on crystal and amorphous surfaces during ion sputtering.