Image of the week: common domain boundaries in silica bilayers

By Tom Sharp on December 5, 2016

This week’s image of the week comes from a recent Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter paper by Dr Markus Heyde et al. of the Fritz Haber Institut der Max Planck Gesellschaft.

Domain boundaries are hypothesized to play a role in the crystalline to amorphous transition. The authors examined domain boundary structures in comparison to crystalline and amorphous structures in bilayer silica grown on Ru(0001). They used atomically resolved scanning probe microscopy data of boundaries in crystalline bilayer films determine structural motifs.

Figure: Common domain boundaries. STM images showing (a) two segments of a 57 boundary and a short segment of a 558 boundary (IT = 100 pA, VS = 0.5 V, scan area = 7.4 nm × 7.4 nm), (b) two 558 boundary segments connected by a group of five- and seven-membered rings (IT = 10 pA, VS = 2.0 V, scan area = 7.4 nm × 7.4 nm), and (c) a complex boundary, consisting in different portions of 57, 558, and 48 boundary sections (IT = 100 pA, VS = 1.0 V, scan area = 7.4 nm × 7.4 nm). Taken from J. Phys. Cond. Mat. 3 035002. © IOP Publishing 2016. All rights reserved.

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