Colloquium
4 p.m.
Sept. 11 2009
Paul Sharrah Lecture Hall (Room 133)
Physics Building

Alberto Pimpinelli
Attaché for Science and Technology
French Embassy in Houston, TX

Growth instabilities in vacuum deposition on crystal surfaces: Copper on copper, a case study

Copper has long been considered the ideal model system for investigating vacuum deposition: it is a noble metal, and its surface does not reconstruct. However, the experimental study of Cu on Cu growth on vicinal - i.e. stepped - surfaces, has shown that even copper is not that simple. In fact, we are currently unable to explain fully the detailed behaviour of the surface morphologies observed in experiments. In this talk, I will summarize the present theoretical understanding of growth instabilities resulting from same atom deposition on crystal surface (homoepitaxy.) I will then describe in details the case of copper, and what we do and do not understand. Then, I will discuss our own numerical studies of homoepitaxial growth using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, and what kind of knowledge we have been able to obtain. In particular, the effect of impurities on surface morphologies out of equilibrium will be addressed, as well as their possible role in understanding the copper experiments.