American Institute of Physics, AIP Advances, 5(7), p. 055302, 2017
DOI: 10.1063/1.4982886
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The energetics of vicinal SrTiO$_3$(001) and DyScO$_3$(110), prototypical perovskite vicinal surfaces, has been studied using topographic atomic force microscopy imaging. The kink formation and strain relaxation energies are extracted from a statistical analysis of the step meandering. Both perovskite surfaces have very similar kink formation energies and exhibit a similar triangular step undulation. Our experiments suggest that the energetics of perovskite oxide surfaces is mainly governed by the local oxygen coordination. ; Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures