The kinetics of hill-and-valley faceting of oxygen-covered tungsten

The coarsening kinetics of steplike faceted O/W(332) surface is investigated using field ion microscopy. The spatial density of facets is measured as a function of time (10–320 s) and temperature (1100–1400 K). The results are discussed in terms of the temporal coarsening exponent and the activation energy for the coarsening process.