Crystal Growth Cessation Revisited: The Physical Basis of Step Pinning

The growth of crystals from solution is a fundamental process of relevance to such diverse areas as X-ray diffraction structural determination and the role of mineralization in living organisms. A key factor determining the dynamics of crystallization is the effect of impurities on step growth. For over 50 years, all discussions of impurity-step interaction have been framed in the context of the Cabrera-Vermilyea (CV) model for step blocking, which has nevertheless proven difficult to validate experimentally. Here we report on extensive computer
simulations which clearly falsify the CV model, suggesting a more complex picture. While reducing to the CV result in certain limits, our approach is more widely applicable, encompassing nontrivial impurity?crystal interactions, mobile impurities, and negative growth, among others.