Diffraction from two-dimensional vicinal surfaces with noncolliding meandering steps

Abstract

We present a diffraction pattern analysis for vicinal surfaces with meandering noncolliding steps, so that the fluctuations of adjacent steps are not correlated. For these conditions, we evaluate the shape of the diffuse scattering (additional to sharp peaks due to the long-range order of the steps), and show that the root-mean-square width, the kink density, and the correlation of the individual meandering steps can be obtained from the diffuse scattering for different scattering conditions due to the intrastep correlation. The surface morphology is generated by Monte Carlo simulations performed at various temperatures until the kink density is equilibrated but the steps do not collide. This enables us to compare the direct statistical analysis of the surfaces with the diffraction analysis. We demonstrate that the agreement is excellent. Furthermore, we discuss how these results can be applied to the analysis of diffuse x-ray diffraction from multilayers with noncorrelated interfaces.