Real Materials

Free Surfaces

· Free surfaces have a structure that may differ from the bulk solid and also a different lattice spacing.
· "Real" surfaces contain defects such as the ledges, kinks, vacancies and adsorbed atoms as shown opposite.
· Ledges, kinks and surface vacancies provide locations with stronger bonding than the terraces and are, therefore, favored sites for atom addition during crystal growth or surface contamination by non-lattice atoms.