Measurement of the rigid body translation across the {111} APB facet in GaAs

At planar boundaries a relaxation of the atoms at the boundary plane will generally occur. This relaxation consists of a local re-arrangement of the atoms close to the boundary, and a rigid-body translation which affects the relative position of the grains far from the boundary. The rigid-body translation associated with a {111} APB facet in GaAs, a non-stoichiometric facet consisting entirely of one type of anti-site bonds, has been determined. For the Ga-Ga configuration studied, the relaxation is normal to the facet plane, and corresponds to an expansion of 0.0098 ± 0.002 nm.