Epitaxy of ionic insulators on a vicinal metal substrate: KCl and RbI on Cu 211/

Ultrathin epitaxial films of the ionic insulators KCl and RbI on Cu 211.were investigated by high-resolution low-energy electron diffraction SPALEED.. The Cu template employed is a vicinal surface which consists of 111. terraces separated by intrinsic monatomic 100. steps along the w011x direction step distance 6.25 A°.. The resulting uniaxial substrate corrugation forces row matching between the intrinsic step separation and the characteristic lattice parameters along low-indexed azimuthal directions of the alkali halide layer. In this way, single-crystalline 100.-terminated films whose azimuthal orientations correspond to KClw010xICuw011xand RbIw011xICuw011x, respectively, are obtained. q2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.