JOURNAL OF PHYSICS-CONDENSED MATTER, vol.11, no.8, pp.1915-1925, 1999 (SCI-Expanded)
We study the equilibration of an initial surface misoriented relative to a high-symmetry (low-energy) direction. The surface considered consists of parallel monatomic ledges separated by terraces. Both repulsive and attractive interactions between step pairs are taken into account. Repulsive interactions between steps are assumed to vary as l(-2) and attractive interactions to vary as l(-1) where l is the average step separation between neighbouring steps. Attractive interactions lead to step bunching, and as a consequence the resulting morphology is in the form of macro-steps separated by large flat terraces. The time dependence of flat parts that separates the macro-steps (step bunches) is not expressible as a simple analytic function.