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Updated: Jan 25, 2026

The Role of Fabric in Frictional Properties of Phyllosilicate-Rich Tectonic Faults
Published on: November 6, 2021
Stacking-fault nucleation on Ir(111)
Carsten Busse1, Celia Polop, Michael Müller
1Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen, D-52056 Aachen, Germany. busse@physik.rwth-aachen.de
Abstract:
Variable temperature scanning tunneling microscopy experiments reveal that in Ir(111) homoepitaxy islands nucleate and grow both in the regular fcc stacking and in the faulted hcp stacking. Analysis of this effect in dependence on deposition temperature leads to an atomistic model of stacking-fault formation: The large, metastable stacking-fault islands grow by sufficiently fast addition of adatoms to small mobile adatom clusters which occupy in thermal equilibrium the hcp sites with a significant probability. Using parameters derived independently by field ion microscopy, the model accurately describes the results for Ir(111) and is expected to be valid also for other surfaces.
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