Growth of alkali halides from the vapor on single-crystal substrates of alkali halides

Abstract

Alkali halides of the sodium chloride type structure (LiF, NaF, LiC1, KF, NaC1, NaBr, KC1, KBr, KI and RbI) were deposited from the vapor phase by evaporation in a vacuum on to cleavage surfaces of LiF, NaC1, KC1 and KBr.It was found by electron diffraction that the crystals of the initial deposit were oriented with their crystallographic axes parallel to those of the substrate for all deposit-substrate combinations.Through the examination of deposits which had an average thickness of only a few atomic layers, the mechanism of crystallization of the initial deposit was determined.