Abstract
Consider faceting of a crystal surface caused by strongly anisotropic surface tension, driven by surface diffusion and accompanied by deposition (etching) due to fluxes normal to the surface. Nonlinear evolution equations describing the faceting of and crystal surfaces are studied analytically, by means of matched asymptotic expansions for small growth rates, and numerically otherwise. Stationary shapes and dynamics of faceted pyramidal structures are found as functions of the growth rate. In the case it is shown that a solitary hill as well as periodic hill-and-valley solutions are unique, while solutions in the form of a solitary valley form a one-parameter family. It is found that with the increase of the growth rate, the faceting dynamics exhibits transitions from the power-law coarsening to the formation of pyramidal structures with a fixed average size and finally to spatiotemporally chaotic surfaces resembling the kinetic roughening.
- Received 29 September 2002
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.67.021606
©2003 American Physical Society