Abstract
It is well known that impurities attached to a surface cause step bunching, but the effects of a surface diffusion field on step bunching have not been studied sufficiently. In this paper, we carry out Monte Carlo simulations using a simple lattice model and study how the surface diffusion field affects the growth law of the bunch size in the step bunching induced by immobile impurities. We consider a vicinal face with step spacing l. Both impurities and atoms impinge from a vapor phase to the vicinal face, but they do not evaporate. We change the impingement rate of atoms, F, keeping the ratio of the impingement rate of impurities to F constant. When F is smaller than a critical value Fc, the vicinal face becomes unstable and an array of equidistant bunches is formed. In the case of diffusion-limited growth, Fc is inversely proportional to l2. The dependence of Fc on l changes in the case of step-kinetics-limited growth: Fc becomes inversely proportional to l.
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