Speaker: Michel Jabbour, University of Kentucky

Date, time, place: 18 April 2006, 2pm, POT 845

Title: Novel Morphological Instabilities During Step-Flow Epitaxy

Abstract: We discuss a novel mechanism for step bunching during the
epitaxial growth of a generic single-component crystalline film. Step
bunching, a one-dimensional instability, has attracted the interest of
theoretical surface phycisists for the past several decades. In the
proposed theory, the instability finds its root in the presence of a
jump discontinuity in the grand canonical potential across the steps.
This jump discontinuity is absent from more standard models. (This is
work in progress with P. Cermelli of the Università di Torino.)