Competition between noise and determinism in step flow growth

Journal Article · Mon Dec 06 04:00:00 EST 1993 · Physical Review Letters; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.3810· OSTI ID:5434523

Karma, A; Misbah, C ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115 (United States) Institut Laue-Langevin, Boite Postal 156, Cedex 9, Grenoble (France)

The continuum equations of Burton, Cabrera, and Frank are extended to include thermal fluctuations and used to derive a nonlinear stochastic equation describing the meandering of an isolated step on a crystal face grown from a vapor. Meandering is found to result from a unique competition between thermal noise, which dominates close to equilibrium, and deterministic noise (spatiotemporal chaos), which becomes increasingly dominant beyond the morphological instability point. Numerical and analytical results characterizing the step roughness as a function of the supersaturation and the noise strength, [ital k][sub [ital B]T]/[gamma][ital x][sub [ital s]], are presented.

• DOE Contract Number: FG02-92ER45471
• OSTI ID: 5434523
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters; (United States), Journal Name: Physical Review Letters; (United States) Vol. 71:23; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
360601 -- Other Materials-- Preparation & Manufacture
360602 -- Other Materials-- Structure & Phase Studies
661300* -- Other Aspects of Physical Science-- (1992-)
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ANALYTICAL SOLUTION
CRYSTAL GROWTH
EPITAXY
FLUCTUATIONS
MECHANICS
MICROSTRUCTURE
MORPHOLOGY
NOISE
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
ROUGHNESS
STATISTICAL MECHANICS
SURFACE PROPERTIES
VAPOR PHASE EPITAXY
VARIATIONS