Kinetic roughening of Kossel and non-Kossel steps

Abstract

This paper studies the energetics and roughening behaviour of vicinal surfaces. The energies of different steps in the presence of 2D nucleation islands are measured using Monte Carlo simulation results. The vanishing of this energy should mark the onset of kinetic roughening. For the [100] step on a Kossel (001) surface this onset is very close to the onset previously found using a new method. This makes the latter a powerful method to study the kinetic roughening behaviour of complicated step structures like the [100] and [010] steps on a non-Kossel (001) face. These steps are studied using this approach and compared both mutually and with the Kossel step. Both steps are found to show very different growth behaviour as compared to the Kossel step. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.