Lee Geunseop, Guo Jiandong, Plummer E W
Department of Physics, Inha University, Inchon 402-751, Korea.
Phys Rev Lett. 2005 Sep 9;95(11):116103. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.116103. Epub 2005 Sep 8.
We report direct visualizations of the fluctuation and condensation phenomena in a phase transition of a one-dimensional (1D) In/Si(111) system using scanning tunneling microscopy. The high-temperature (HT) and low-temperature (LT) phases are found to coexist on the nanometer scale near Tc. Above Tc, 1D LT-phase stripes fluctuate in the HT phase and coalesce into 2D islands with decreasing temperature. They condense to make the LT phase below Tc. Small areas of the HT phase also exist below Tc. The observed temperature-dependent evolution of the nanoscale inhomogeneities is consistent with the theoretical predictions for a second-order phase transition.
我们使用扫描隧道显微镜报告了一维（1D）In/Si(111)系统相变中涨落和凝聚现象的直接可视化。发现在接近Tc时高温（HT）相和低温（LT）相在纳米尺度上共存。高于Tc时，一维LT相条纹在HT相中波动，并随着温度降低合并成二维岛状。它们凝聚形成低于Tc的LT相。在Tc以下也存在小面积的HT相。观察到的纳米尺度不均匀性随温度的演变与二阶相变的理论预测一致。
