Kinetic step bunching instability during surface growth.

We study the step bunching kinetic instability in a growing crystal surface characterized by anisotropic diffusion. The instability is due to the interplay between the elastic interactions and the alternation of step parameters. This instability is predicted to occur on a vicinal semiconductor surface Si(001) or Ge(001) during epitaxial growth. The maximal growth rate of the step bunching increases like F4, where F is the deposition flux. Our results are complemented with numerical simulations which reveal a coarsening behavior in the long time evolution for the nonlinear step dynamics.