Effect of substrate defects on commensurate-incommensurate transitions of adsorbed layers

Abstract

The effect of certain substrate defects on the Commensurate-Incommensurate transition of adsorbed layers is studied theoretically at zero temperature in the case of hexagonal substrate. Hexagonal symmetry is preserved near a continuous transition, in contrast with the ideal substrate case studied by Bak et al., but in agreement with experiments on krypton films on graphite. The apparent power law observed experimentally is interpreted as resulting from a crossover from a Frank-Van der Merwe behaviour to a linear law which is never reached because of finite size effects