Nonclassical “Explosive” Nucleation in Pb/Si(111) at Low Temperatures
Date
Authors
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Authors
Research Projects
Organizational Units
The Department of Chemistry seeks to provide students with a foundation in the fundamentals and application of chemical theories and processes of the lab. Thus prepared they me pursue careers as teachers, industry supervisors, or research chemists in a variety of domains (governmental, academic, etc).
History
The Department of Chemistry was founded in 1880.
Dates of Existence
1880-present
Related Units
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (parent college)
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Department
Abstract
Classically, the onset of nucleation is defined in terms of a critical cluster of the condensed phase, which forms from the gradual aggregation of randomly diffusing adatoms. Experiments in Pb/Si(111) at low temperature have discovered a dramatically different type of nucleation, with perfect crystalline islands emerging “explosively” out of the compressed wetting layer after a critical coverage Θc ¼ 1.22 ML is reached. The unexpectedly high island growth rates, the directional correlations in the growth of neighboring islands and the persistence in time of where mass is added in individual islands, suggest that nucleation is a result of the highly coherent motion of the wetting layer, over mesoscopic distances.
Comments
This article is from Physical Review Letters 113 (2014): 236101, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.236101. Posted with permission.