We demonstrate that convenient thermal treatment of a specific sapphire vicinal surface can induce the formation of a fully two-dimensional (2D) ordered surface made of a periodic assembly of (006) facets. The similarity between the resulting surface topography and patterns represented in the “hexagon series” of paintings by Vasarely is really striking! We thus propose to call these surfaces as “nanoscaled Vasarely surfaces”. We also show that the self-organization process, which is driven by the minimization of the free energy of a closed system, results in a quasi-linear isothermal growth of the facets’ surface area over time.

中文翻译：

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在蓝宝石晶体上进行纳米级的Vasarely绘画

我们证明特定蓝宝石毗连表面的方便热处理可以诱导由（006）小面的周期性组装制成的完全二维（2D）有序表面的形成。最终产生的表面形貌与Vasarely的“六边形系列”绘画所表现出的图案之间的相似性实在惊人！因此，我们建议将这些表面称为“纳米级Vasarely表面”。我们还表明，自组织过程由封闭系统的自由能最小化驱动，导致刻面表面积随时间准线性等温增长。