The atomic slide puzzle
Ellak Somfai and I have a very enjoyable collaboration with our experimental colleagues Raoul van Gastel and Joost Frenken on understanding the behavior of Indium buried in the topmost layer of a Copper surface. The Indium makes diffusive hops every so often when it exchanges with a vacancy. This rarely happens, but if it happens the Indium usually exchanges with the vacancy several times. The net result is therefore that upon comparing the positions of the Indium before and after the exchanges with the vacancy, it has made several hops. We refer to this process as the atomic slide puzzle since it is reminiscent of this game in which we shift positions of little tiles by shifting the position of the one missing tile around.
Popular descriptions of this work appeared in ScienceNews, in Physics News and in various other places, listed below. We published a short write-up on this in Nature; a more detailed letter was published in Physical Review Letters.
List of popular articles on this subject; if copies are not available from the web, write to Raoul van Gastel (gastel@phys.leidenuniv.nl) if you'd like to have a hardcopy.
1. Indium atoms on the fast track, Inside R&D, December 8th, 2000; Text is available electronically
2. Atomaire schuifpuzzel, NRC Handelsblad, December 9th, 2000; Text is available in hardcopy
3. Een schuifpuzzel van atomen, Leidsch Dagblad, December 20, 2000; Text is available in hardcopy
4. Vacatures houden atomen flexibel, Volkskrant, February 3, 2001; Text is available in hardcopy
5. Atomic slide puzzles, Physics News Update 525, February 13, 2001; Text is available electronically
6. Seeming sedate some solid surfaces seethe, Science News 159 (2001), 118, February 24, 2001; Text is available in hardcopy
7. Atomic sliding puzzle, ScienceNow, February 28, 2001; Text is available in hardcopy
8. Donga.com online news service; Text is not available.
9. IEEE Spectrum, February 2001 issue; we have not seen this article
10. Naturally occuring vacancies shuffle low-index metal surfaces, MRS-bulletin, March 2001, 158-59; hardcopy availabe
11. A Montreal daily newspaper; we have not seen this article
12. Science et Avenir; soon to appear.
Wim van Saarloos
April 19, 2001
[Pattern formation] [Wim van Saarloos] [Instituut-Lorentz]