corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 81 » Issue 23
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5181–5184 (1998)

Photoinduced Crystallization of Amorphous Ice Films on Graphite

Download: PDF (141 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Dinko Chakarov* and Bengt Kasemo
Department of Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology and University of Göteborg, 412 96 Göteborg, Sweden

Received 15 June 1998; published in the issue dated 7 December 1998

See accompanying Physics Focus

We have experimentally discovered a new nonthermal mechanism by which submonolayer and multilayer amorphous ice films, deposited at T<100K, crystallize due to UV radiation; the proposed mechanism is that photoexcited charge carriers in the graphite substrate tunnel into defect states in the amorphous film, and induce exothermic relaxation from the metastable amorphous to the stable crystalline phase.

© 1998 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.5181
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.5181
PACS:
68.35.Rh, 73.50.Gr, 82.50.Fv

*Corresponding author.Email address: f 7xdc@fy.chalmers.se

 
< Previous Article | Next Article >