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Real Materials

Free Surfaces

Free surfaces have a structure that may differ from the bulk solid and also a different lattice spacing.
"Real" surfaces contain defects such as the ledges, kinks, vacancies and adsorbed atoms as shown opposite.
Ledges, kinks and surface vacancies provide locations with stronger bonding than the terraces and are, therefore, favored sites for atom addition during crystal growth or surface contamination by non-lattice atoms.