Using the Wigner-Ibach Surmise to Analyze Terrace-Width Distributions: History, User's Guide, and Advances

TL;DR

This paper reviews the application of the Wigner-Ibach surmise to analyze terrace-width distributions on vicinal surfaces, providing a historical perspective, practical guidance, and recent methodological advances.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive history, practical user guidance, and updates on recent extensions of the Wigner-Ibach surmise for surface step interaction analysis.

Findings

Effective in extracting step interaction strength from TWD data

Provides a practical guide for experimental application

Summarizes recent methodological extensions

Abstract

A history is given of the applications of the simple expression generalized from the surmise by Wigner and also by Ibach to extract the strength of the interaction between steps on a vicinal surface, via the terrace width distribution (TWD). A concise guide for use with experiments and a summary of some recent extensions are provided.