Spiral Growth and Step Edge Barriers

The growth of spiral mounds containing a screw dislocation is compared to the growth of wedding cakes by two-dimensional nucleation. Using phase field simulations and homoepitaxial growth experiments on the Pt(111) surface we show that both structures attain the same characteristic large scale shape when a significant step edge barrier suppresses interlayer transport. The higher vertical growth rate observed for the spiral mounds on Pt(111) reflects the different incorporation mechanisms for atoms in the top region and can be formally represented by an enhanced apparent step edge barrier.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, partly in colo

Outlines of Ulster. The spatial politics of contemporary Northern Irish fiction and film

This study investigates the ways in which contemporary Northern Irish fiction and film have responded to the socio-spatial challenges of conflict and peace. It focusses on the representations of spatial change in the context of thirty years of conflict, the recent redistribution of political power and the ongoing negotiation of what peace might look like in social and political terms. I contend that the interpretations of space and place put forward in fiction and film on Northern Ireland are extremely effective incursions into what human geographers call the 'geographical imagination' as the concept that determines “how the place should be thought of, how it should be represented” (Jess and Massey, 1995). Participating in the negotiation of shared spaces, peaceful spatial practices and of truth and reconciliation, they challenge the outlines of what A.T.Q. Stewart (1977) has called “the narrow ground of Ulster” and enrich the political discourse by imagining alternative socio-spatial narratives for the North. In my analyses, I demonstrate this capacity by reading the primary texts against the texts of political agreements, acts of law, journalist commentary and historical observation

Twins and their boundaries during homoepitaxy on Ir(111)

The growth and annealing behavior of strongly twinned homoepitaxial films on Ir(111) has been investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy, low energy electron diffraction and surface X-ray diffraction. In situ surface X-ray diffraction during and after film growth turned out to be an efficient tool for the determination of twin fractions in multilayer films and to uncover the nature of side twin boundaries. The annealing of the twin structures is shown to take place in a two step process, reducing first the length of the boundaries between differently stacked areas and only then the twins themselves. A model for the structure of the side twin boundaries is proposed which is consistent with both the scanning tunneling microscopy and surface X-ray diffraction data.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure

Capture numbers and islands size distributions in models of submonolayer surface growth

The capture numbers entering the rate equations (RE) for submonolayer film growth are determined from extensive kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations for simple representative growth models yielding point, compact, and fractal island morphologies. The full dependence of the capture numbers on island size, and on both the coverage and the D/F ratio between the adatom diffusion coefficient D and deposition rate F is determined. Based on this information, the RE are solved to give the RE island size distribution (RE-ISD). The RE-ISDs are shown to agree well with the corresponding KMC-ISDs for all island morphologies. For compact morphologies, however, this agreement is only present for coverages smaller than about 5% due to a significantly increased coalescence rate compared to fractal morphologies. As found earlier, the scaled KMC-ISDs as a function of scaled island size approach, for fixed coverage, a limiting curve for D/F going to infinity. Our findings provide evidence that the limiting curve is independent of the coverage for point islands, while the results for compact and fractal island morphologies indicate a dependence on the coverage.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure

Island size distributions in submonolayer growth: successful prediction by mean field theory with coverage dependent capture numbers

We show that mean-field rate equations for submonolayer growth can successfully predict island size distributions in the pre-coalescence regime if the full dependence of capture numbers on both the island size and the coverage is taken into account. This is demonstrated by extensive Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for a growth kinetics with hit and stick aggregation. A detailed analysis of the capture numbers reveals a nonlinear dependence on the island size for small islands. This nonlinearity turns out to be crucial for the successful prediction of the island size distribution and renders an analytical treatment based on a continuum limit of the mean-field rate equations difficult.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figue

Elastic continuum theory: Fully understanding of the twist-bend nematic phases

The twist-bend nematic phase, $N_{\rm TB}$, may be viewed as a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the director $\bf n$ precesses uniformly about an extra director field, $\bf t$. It corresponds to a nematic ground state exhibiting nanoscale periodic modulation. To demonstrate the stability of this phase from the elastic point of view, a natural extension of the Frank elastic energy density is proposed. The elastic energy density is built in terms of the elements of symmetry of the new phase in which intervene the components of these director fields together with the usual Cartesian tensors. It is shown that the ground state corresponds to a deformed state for which $K_{22} > K_{33}$. When the elastic free energy is interpreted in analogy with the Landau theory, it is demonstrated the existence of a second order phase transition between the usual and the twist-bend nematic phase, driven by a new elastic parameter playing a role similar to the one of the main dielectric anisotropy of classical nematics and being closely related to the bulk compression modulus representing the pseudo-layers of twist-bend nematic phases. A phase transition and the value of the nanoscale pitch are predicted in accordance to experimental results.Comment: 2 figure

Information technology as a tool to improve the competitiveness of the organization

In this article we are talking about competitiveness and how competitiveness is enhanced through information technology

Two Dimensional Ir-Cluster Lattices on Moir\'e of Graphene with Ir(111)

Lattices of Ir clusters have been grown by vapor phase deposition on graphene moir\'{e}s on Ir(111). The clusters are highly ordered, spatially and thermally stable below 500K. Their narrow size distribution is tunable from 4 to about 130 atoms. A model for cluster binding to the graphene is presented based on scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory. The proposed binding mechanism suggests that similar cluster lattices might be grown of materials other than Ir.Comment: Submitted to PRL on 27Apr0