Münster 1997 – scientific programme
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O: Oberflächenphysik
O 36: Phasenübergänge und dynamische Eigenschaften
O 36.4: Talk
Thursday, March 20, 1997, 16:45–17:00, BOT
Kink properties of vicinal fcc (111) surfaces — •M.I. Larsson1, H. Frischat1, J. Wollschl"ager1, and M.C. Tringides2 — 1Institut f"ur Festk"orperphysik, Universit"at Hannover, Appelstr.2, D-30167 Hannover — 2Department of Physics, Iowa State University, Ames IA 50011, USA
We study properties of vicinal fcc (111) surfaces by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations where both the initial and the final local atomic environments are used to determine the hopping probability. By studying the terrace size distribution as a function of annealing temperature and surface vicinality, we conclude that an effective attractive interaction between steps is present at lower temperatures and smaller terrace lengths, but is less important at higher temperatures and larger terrace lengths, as a result of the local pairwise interactions between neighbouring atoms. Kink motion was measured from the time dependent correlation function GK(t) α t1/4 after the number of kinks has reached quasi-equilibrium, which confirms that the step relaxation in this early time regime is one-dimensional. Furthermore, a detailed balance calculation is performed, which gives the kink formation energy.