Wednesday, September 26, 2012

1104.1121 (Champika G. Gamage et al.)

Nonlinear effects for island coarsening and stabilization during
strained film heteroepitaxy
   [PDF]

Champika G. Gamage, Zhi-Feng Huang
Nonlinear evolution of three-dimensional strained islands or quantum dots in heteroepitaxial thin films is studied via a continuum elasticity model and the development of a nonlinear dynamic equation governing the film morphological profile. All three regimes of island array evolution are identified and examined, including a film instability regime at early stage, a nonlinear coarsening regime at intermediate times, and the crossover to a saturated asymptotic state, with detailed behavior depending on film-substrate misfit strains but not qualitatively on finite system sizes. The phenomenon of island stabilization and saturation, which corresponds to the formation of steady but non-ordered arrays of strained quantum dots, occurs at later time for smaller misfit strain. It is found to be controlled by the strength of film-substrate wetting interaction which would constrain the valley-to-peak mass transport and hence the growth of island height, and also determined by the effect of elastic interaction between surface islands and the high-order strain energy of individual islands at late evolution stage. The results are compared to previous experimental and theoretical studies on quantum dots coarsening and saturation.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.1121

No comments:

Post a Comment