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We study the formation and evolution of coherent islands on lattice mismatched epitaxially strained films. Faceted islands form in films with aniostropic surface tension. Under annealing, these islands ripen until a stable array is formed,…
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…
We investigate the equilibrium properties of strained heteroepitaxial systems, incorporating the formation and the growth of a wetting film, dislocation free island formation, and ripening. The derived phase diagram provides a detailed…
We investigate the formation and the coarsening dynamics of islands in a strained epitaxial semi-conductor film. These islands are commonly observed in thin films undergoing a morphological instability due to the presence of the elasto…
A strained epitaxial film deposited on a deformable substrate undergoes a morphological instability relaxing the elastic energy by surface diffusion. The nonlinear and nonlocal dynamical equations of such films with wetting interactions are…
We consider a variational model for the formation of islands in heteroepitaxial growth on unbounded domains. We first derive the scaling regimes of the minimal energy in terms of the volume of the film and the amplitude of the…
Island formation in strain-free heteroepitaxial deposition of thin films is analyzed using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of two minimal lattice models and scaling approaches. The transition from layer-by-layer (LBL) to island (ISL) growth…
We study the morphological evolution of strained heteroepitaxial films using a kinetic Monte Carlo method in three dimensions. The elastic part of the problem uses a Green's function method. Isolated islands are observed under deposition…
We investigate island formation during heteroepitaxial growth using an atomistic model that incorporates deposition, activated diffusion and stress relaxation. For high misfit the system naturally evolves into a state characterized by a…
Morphological properties of strained epitaxial films are examined through a mesoscopic approach developed to incorporate both the film crystalline structure and standard continuum theory. Film surface profiles and properties, such as…
We consider the shape evolution of two-dimensional islands on a crystal surface in the regime where mass transport is exclusively along the island edge. A directed mass current due to surface electromigration causes the island to migrate in…
The shape evolution of two-dimensional islands through periphery diffusion biased by an electromigration force is studied numerically using a continuum approach. We show that the introduction of crystal anisotropy in the mobility of edge…
We introduce an off-lattice model with continuous particle distances and pair-potential interactions which allows for the efficient simulation of strained heteroepitaxial growth by means of kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations. We discuss…
Understanding surface dynamics during epitaxial film growth is key to growing high quality materials with controllable properties. X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) using coherent x-rays opens new opportunities for in situ…
Thin films are usually obtained by depositing atoms with a continuous flux. We show that using a chopped flux changes the growth and the morphology of the film. A simple scaling analysis predicts how the island densities change as a…
Smectic liquid crystal films a few molecular layers thick that are freely suspended in air are used as a model system to study the coalescence of fluids in two dimensions. High-speed video microscopy is used to observe the coalescence of…
We study the energetics of island formation in Stranski-Krastanow growth within a parameter-free approach. It is shown that an optimum island size exists for a given coverage and island density if changes in the wetting layer morphology…
We propose a physical model which explains the existence of finite thickness wetting layers in epitaxially strained films. The finite wetting layer is shown to be stable due to the variation of the non-linear elastic free energy with film…
As a departure from existing continuum approaches for describing the stability and evolution of surfaces of crystalline materials, this article provides a description of surface evolution based on the physics of the main feature imposed by…
We investigate the influence of intermixing on heteroepitaxial growth dynamics, using a two-dimensional point island model, expected to be a good approximation in the early stages of epitaxy. In this model, which we explore both…