Surface morphology change induced by bulk order-disorder transition in Cu3Au alloy

Abstract

In recent years the surfaces of Cu3Au, a typical ordering alloy, have attracted interest from many aulhors[l-6], because the surface is a good example for testing general theories of the 2-D order-disorder phase transition, and also because it is a good material for studying the behavior of bimetallic alloy surfaces and their reactions with surface impurities. Previous work on Cu3Au surface mostly used macroscopic techniques and provided only information averaged over a largearea. In this work the microscopic imaging and diffraction methods are used to study the (111) surface on a more localized scale. Reflection Electron Microscopy (REM) was used to directly image the surface, and the selected-area RHEED was used to determine the local surface crystal structure and orientation.The samples used for observation are single crystal spheres prepared by melting a small piece of Cu3Au suspended on a thin Mo wire. The actual compositions of the samples are about Cu0.7Au0.3. The (111) facets on these spheres were then cleaned by the conventional ion-milling-heating method in a UHV environment.