Terrace selection during equilibration at an icosahedral quasicrystal surface
Date
Authors
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
We investigate the equilibration of a fivefold surface of the icosahedral Al‐Pd‐Mn quasicrystal at 900–915 and 925–950 K, using scanning tunneling microscopy. After annealing at the lower temperatures, there is a high density of shallow voids on some terraces but not on others; at 925–950 K, the void-rich terraces are much rarer. The terminations that are consumed by voids exhibit a distinctive local atomic configuration, called a “ring” by previous authors. Apparently, through growth and coalescence of the voids, a different termination becomes exposed on the host terraces, which also leads to a change in step heights at the edges of the terraces. We suggest that the shallow steps associated with the voids, and the ring configuration, signal a surface that is in an intermediate stage of structural equilibration.
Series Number
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Academic or Administrative Unit
Type
Comments
This article is from Physical Review B 71, no. 16 (2005): 165411, doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.71.165411.