Determining the energetics of vicinal perovskite oxide surfaces

The energetics of vicinal SrTiO3(001) and DyScO3(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.