Step Crowding Effects Dampen the Stochasticity of Crystal Growth Kinetics

Physical Review Letters
James F LutskoMike Sleutel

Abstract

Crystals grow by laying down new layers of material which can either correspond in size to the height of one unit cell (elementary steps) or multiple unit cells (macrosteps). Surprisingly, experiments have shown that macrosteps can grow under conditions of low supersaturation and high impurity density such that elementary step growth is completely arrested. We use atomistic simulations to show that this is due to two effects: the fact that the additional layers bias fluctuations in the position of the bottom layer towards growth and by a transition, as step height increases, from a 2D to a 3D nucleation mechanism.

References

Feb 15, 1994·Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter·D Kandel, J D Weeks
Sep 2, 2004·Biophysical Journal·Matthias WeissTommy Nilsson
Mar 17, 2011·Physical Review Letters·Jae-Hyung JeonRalf Metzler
Feb 19, 2013·Physical Review Letters·Madhav Ranganathan, John D Weeks
Jul 22, 2015·Physical Review Letters·Mike SleutelAlexander E S Van Driessche

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Citations

Jan 18, 2018·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Cornelius Fischer, Andreas Luttge
Jul 18, 2018·Physical Review. E·Masahide Sato
Nov 12, 2019·Journal of the American Chemical Society·Tehilla BergerRan Drori

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