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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
Concentration profiles of surface atoms have been obtained from Monte Carlo simulations of epitaxial growth with anisotropic nearest-neighbor bonding on two different vicinal GaAs(001) surfaces which are misoriented toward [110] (denoted as A) and [110] (denoted as B). These profiles are compared with predictions based upon the original Burton-Cabrera-Frank (BCF) theory and with a modified BCF theory which accounts for the fact that all atoms, not simply free adatoms, can participate in surface diffusion. On both surfaces the modified BCF equation provides a more accurate description of the adatom concentration profiles than that obtained using only the free adatom concentration. This is due to step detachment processes which leads to an effective source of free adatoms that is not taken into account in the original BCF approach. Above the temperature where the growth becomes dominated by step advancement, the curvature of the concentration profile of potentially active atoms on both surfaces are similar but the concentrations differ due to the difference of the capture efficiency of the two types of step edges.