The interaction of a model strained metal film with O was studied by using scanning tunnelling microscopy. Two monolayers of Cu on (00▪1)Ru presented a well-defined dislocation network that was composed of threading dislocations and Shockley partial dislocations which separated areas of face-centered cubic and hexagonal close-packed stacking. It was found that O first reacted with these threading dislocations. At higher O exposures, new threading dislocation arrays appeared at the surface. Upon adding more O, the mesoscopic structure of the film changed from a striped array of Shockley partials to a disordered array of triangular face-centered cubic regions that were bounded by dislocations, as O etched away the hexagonal close-packed areas of the Cu film.

Linking Dislocation Dynamics and Chemical Reactivity on Strained Metal Films. J.De la Figuera, K.Pohl, A.K.Schmid, N.C.Bartelt, R.Q.Hwang: Surface Science, 1998, 415[1-2], L993-9