Kinetics of faceting driven by attractive step-step interactions on vicinal Si(113) - art. no. 216103

We have studied the far-from-equilibrium kinetics of faceting caused by sho rt-ranged attractive step-step interactions on vicinal Si(113), using scann ing tunneling microscopy. We show that a network of step bunches coarsens v ia both zipping up of the neighboring step bunches and irreversible binding events which alter the local topological configuration. A step-network mod el which incorporates the irreversible step-bunch-binding events yields qua ntitative understanding of the experimental results.