Variable temperature scanning tunneling microscopy experiments revealed that in Ir(111) homo-epitaxy islands nucleate and grow both in the regular face-centered cubic stacking and in the faulted hexagonal close-packed stacking. Analysis of this effect in dependence on deposition temperature leads to an atomistic model of stacking-fault formation: The large, metastable stacking-fault islands grow by sufficiently fast addition of adatoms to small mobile adatom clusters which occupied in thermal equilibrium the hexagonal close-

packed sites with a significant probability. Using parameters derived independently by field ion microscopy, the model accurately described the results for Ir(111) and was expected to be valid also for other surfaces.

Stacking-Fault Nucleation on Ir(111). C.Busse, C.Polop, M.Müller, K.Albe, U.Linke, T.Michely: Physical Review Letters, 2003, 91[5], 056103 (4pp)