Electric forces on a confined advacancy island - Archive ouverte HAL
Journal Articles Physical Review B Year : 2020

Electric forces on a confined advacancy island

Pierre Müller
Stefano Curiotto

Abstract

The passage of an electric current in a material can cause a biased mass transport at its surface. This migration phenomenon is intimately related to the microscopic details of atomic processes of diffusion and attachment/detachment at step edges. Using low-energy electron microscopy, we have examined in operando under an electric current the migration of Si(111)-1 × 1 advacancy islands confined on Si(111)-7 × 7 terraces. The islands move opposite to the current direction, with velocity increasing with the radius. The effective valence of Si adatoms is 2.8 ± 0.5 and the kinetic length of attachment-detachment is about 500 nm. The analysis of the island’s shape reveals that the electric current significantly biases the kinetic rate of mass transfers at step edges modifying the overall island’s shape.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
HAL-Version-2020_Leroy_PRB_EMSi111.pdf (422.16 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origin Files produced by the author(s)

Dates and versions

hal-02569097 , version 1 (11-05-2020)
hal-02569097 , version 2 (10-12-2020)

Identifiers

Cite

Frédéric Leroy, Ali El-Barraj, Fabien Cheynis, Pierre Müller, Stefano Curiotto. Electric forces on a confined advacancy island. Physical Review B, 2020, 102 (23), ⟨10.1103/PhysRevB.102.235412⟩. ⟨hal-02569097v2⟩
88 View
146 Download

Altmetric

Share

More