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Morphological Symmetry Breaking During Epitaxial Growth at Grazing Incidence

Jianxin Zhong·Enge Wang·Qian Niu·Zhenyu Zhang
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Abstract

It is shown that, in submonolayer growth at off-normal incidence, even much less than one percent of transfer from the condensation energy of the deposited atoms into adatom motion is sufficient to induce a net adatom current from the illuminated edge of a two-dimensional island to the other edges, thereby breaking the island symmetry. Such a symmetry breaking phenomenon is most pronounced for deposition at grazing incidence. Comparison between our theoretical predictions and existing experimental results confirms the general validity of the model.

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Jianxin Zhong, Enge Wang, Qian Niu, Zhenyu Zhang. 2000-11-07. Morphological Symmetry Breaking During Epitaxial Growth at Grazing Incidence. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.84.3895

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