Our paper, describing how the migration of metal surface atoms are affected by applied electric fields, has now become published by Physical Review B. We show that a field gradient may create a biased atom migration towards stronger fields. This effect comes as an applied field will affect the surface charge distribution and in particular how it changes when a surface atom moves. This change will in turn change the energy landscape so that atoms are more likely to move in a certain preferred direction, as opposed to the normal random walks seen in the absence of fields.
Figure (a) shows from the top view the change of the charge distribution when adding an adatom (purple more charge, cyan less). Figure (b) shows as a cross-section the change of the charge distribution of a system with an adatom when an 1 GV/m field has been applied.
These new theoretical results will help us develop a Kinetic Monte Carlo model for how metal surfaces evolve in high electric fields.
An open access e-print of the paper can be found on ArXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.07782.
Published version: A. Kyritsakis, E. Baibuz, V. Jansson, and F. Djurabekova Phys. Rev. B 99, 205418 https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.205418
Ville Jansson, PhD 