Exploring the activation energy during nanoscale structural evolution in wet etching

Extensive numerical simulations of anisotropic etching of exact and vicinal Si(111) are performed for the first time using the target rate kinetic Monte-Carlo (TR-KMC) algorithm. The results show that the removal of layers on Si(111) is largely controlled by step propagation and that pit nucleation has a vanishingly small role. In turn, step flow itself is largely controlled by kink propagation and, only to a minor extent, by kink nucleation.