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Surface diffusion

Shifting strings

Nature Materials volume 2, pages 778–779 (2003)Cite this article

Many atomic diffusion processes occur at rates that are too fast to observe experimentally. Using video scanning tunnelling microscopy, researchers are now able to observe the individual steps involved in correlated transport of atomic strings on metal surfaces.

Understanding atomic transport at surfaces is an old problem, but one that is of ongoing interest as it governs self-organized growth and surface patterning at the nanometre scale. In the past, researchers had to rely mainly on theoretical models to arrive at an understanding of the atomic processes involved in surface reconstructions, phase transformations and crystal growth. Nowadays, techniques such as scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and low-energy electron microscopy enable researchers to watch surface transformations as they occur. Such observations reveal that wide regions of a crystal surface, consisting of hundreds of atoms, can appear to move collectively from one image to the next, before coming to rest for long periods of time. But is this motion truly collective, or does it just appear so because the limited observation rate does not allow us to see the atomic diffusion processes occurring in between successive images? Using a home-built video STM with high time resolution, Miguel Labayen and colleagues1 have revealed the atomic processes underlying the apparent collective motion of long strings of hexagonally arranged Au atoms embedded into the first atomic plane of the cubic Au(100) lattice. Such hex-strings appear in heteroepitaxial metal-on-metal systems; in adsorbed atomic layers; and on the (100) surfaces of Ir, Pt and Au, where they are the precursors of the hexagonal surface reconstructions observed under ultrahigh vacuum2.

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Figure 1: Non-collective, collective and quasi-collective atomic diffusion processes.

References

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  1. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, CH-1025, Switzerland

    Harald Brune

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  1. Harald Brune
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Brune, H. Shifting strings. Nature Mater 2, 778–779 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1027

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1027

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