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We consider the growth of a vicinal crystal surface in the presence of astep-edge barrier. For any value of the barrier strength, measured by thelength l_es, nucleation of islands on terraces is always able to destroyasymptotically step-flow growth. The breakdown of the metastable step-flowoccurs through the formation of a mound of critical width proportional toL_c=1/sqrt(l_es), the length associated to the linear instability of ahigh-symmetry surface. The time required for the destabilization growsexponentially with L_c. Thermal detachment from steps or islands, or a steeperslope increase the instability time but do not modify the above picture, norchange L_c significantly. Standard continuum theories cannot be used toevaluate the activation energy of the critical mound and the instability time.The dynamics of a mound can be described as a one dimensional random walk forits height k: attaining the critical height (i.e. the critical size) means thatthe probability to grow (k->k+1) becomes larger than the probability for themound to shrink (k->k-1). Thermal detachment induces correlations in the randomwalk, otherwise absent.Comment: 10 pages. Minor changes. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Breakdown of metastable step-flow growth on vicinal surfaces induced by nucleation