Vicinal surfaces

This special section contains a selection of articles on several different aspects of the physics and chemistry of vicinal surfaces. The aim is not to provide a review of all the aspects of the field, but rather to present a collection of articles concerning problems that have deserved attention during the last few years. Vicinal surfaces have been the subject of theoretical and experimental work for several reasons, such as their catalytic activity or the fact that they are natural templates for the epitaxial growth of a different material. In principle, the selection of the miscut angle allows us to choose the lateral periodicity at the surface, because the miscut angle of a vicinal surface determines the average spacing between steps. Ideally, we should obtain a perfect staircase with the homogenous step spacing determined by the miscut angle. In practice, many different factors conspire to make real vicinal surfaces much more complex than expected, since both step bunching and/or meandering along the steps are favoured from the energetic point of view. The contribution by Desjonqueres, Spanjaard and co-workers studies the case of transition and noble metal vicinals. Rahman and co-workers consider also the case of vicinal fcc metals, and study the structural relaxations and vibrational dynamics and thermodynamics of these systems. Both kinds of instabilities (step bunching and step meandering) are studied by Ernst and co-workers for Cu homoepitaxy. An extreme case of step bunching is faceting, where crystalline faces different from the nominal orientation are formed. The paper by Sudoh and Iwasaki considers the case of Si(113), and the role of step–step interactions in the surface faceting. Minoda's contribution studies the role of external forces (DC heating in this case) in the structure of vicinal Si(111). Ortega and co-workers summarize how the surface electronic structure is affected by the step periodicity in the case of Cu(111) and Au(111) vicinals, an important property for the further growth of a different material. They also analyse how the surface electronic structure is modified by a superperiodicity in the nanoscale range. The topic of epitaxial growth on vicinal surfaces is studied in the contribution by Kuhnke andKern, who analyse the role of vicinal metal surfaces as nanotemplates for the growth of low dimensional systems. Several real systems of this kind are also reported in the last papers of the section. Speller and co-workers study the properties of Ag nanostripes deposited on vicinal Cu(111). Rousset and co-workers investigate the role of the step structure in the properties of vicinal Au(111), and also its relevance for the further growth of Co. To conclude, I would like to thank all the authors of this special section for their contributions.