Anisotropic etching diagrams-another way to look at them

Abstract

Starting from a simple model for the step movement, a new interpretation is given to the anisotropic etching angular diagrams. The etching rates along a few main directions, corresponding to some fundamental mechanisms of etching, can explain entirely the complex form of the diagrams. This reduces drastically the number of parameters necessary to describe the diagrams and shows that STM investigations for deducing the mechanisms of etching have to be made only for a limited number of planes.