We present x-ray scattering and scanning-tunneling-microscopy studies of Ag(110) vicinally miscut along the [1¯10] direction. For a clean surface miscut by 1° we find no evidence for phase separation. However, for an impurity concentration of order ≲0.001 monolayer we find that the pinning of steps results in a phase separation into flat (110) terraces and densely stepped regions. With increasing temperature, the clean surface exhibits a rapid decrease in step-step correlations primarily along the [001] direction.

• Received 28 April 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.48.8458