Eur. Phys. J. B 36, 141-147 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2003-00327-8

Mixing length scales: step meandering and island nucleation on vicinal surfaces

¹ Laboratory of Physics, PO Box 1100, 02015 HUT, Espoo, Finland
² Department of Physical Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
³ Fachbereich Physik, Universität Essen, 45117 Essen, Germany

Corresponding author: ^a Marko.Rusanen@ifp.fr

Received: 9 April 2003
Published online: 19 November 2003

Abstract

Simultaneous island nucleation and step flow growth on vicinal surfaces are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. Step edges experience meandering instability under growth conditions if there is a kink barrier suppressing adatom jumps around kink sites. This instability has a characteristic length scale, with different scaling properties from the island separation scale. We show that there is a coupling between island nucleation and step edge instability. The length scale associated with nucleation begins to couple with the wavelength of the step edge patterns when islands and steps coalesce. Only in the submonolayer regime step meandering is independent of island formation. In this regime the island separation has a cross-over scaling behaviour as terrace width is varied.