The smoothing kinetics of Ag(1 1 0) studied by thermal energy He atom scattering

The smoothening process of nanometer-scale ripples grown on the (1 1 0) surface of silver is investigated using thermal energy He atom scattering. Morphological equilibration the corrugated surface is followed in real time in the temperature range between 205 and 230 K. The mean ripple wavelength, Λ, is observed to increase during surface recovery. To take this effect into account the decay time is assumed to scale as Λ3. Within this approximation the ripple amplitude is observed to decay linearly with time. The activation energy of the mechanism driving surface relaxation is estimated as (0.46 ± 0.02) eV. The underlying rate limiting process, i.e. adatom detachment from the open 〈0 0 1〉 step edges is evidenced.