Magic angle and height quantization in nanofacets on SiC(0001) surfaces

We report on the density-functional calculations that provide microscopic mechanism of the facet formation on the SiC (0001) surface. We first identify atom-scale structures of single-, double-, and quad-bilayer steps and find that the single-bilayer (SB) step has the lowest formation energy. We the...

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Veröffentlicht in:Applied physics letters 2014-02, Vol.104 (5)
Hauptverfasser: Sawada, Keisuke, Iwata, Jun-Ichi, Oshiyama, Atsushi
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:We report on the density-functional calculations that provide microscopic mechanism of the facet formation on the SiC (0001) surface. We first identify atom-scale structures of single-, double-, and quad-bilayer steps and find that the single-bilayer (SB) step has the lowest formation energy. We then find that the SB steps are bunched to form a nanofacet with a particular angle relative to the (0001) plane (magic facet angle) and with a discretized height along the (0001) direction (height quantization). We also clarify a microscopic reason for the self-organization of the nanofacet observed experimentally.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4864295