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Mechanical reliability plays an outsized role in determining the durability of flexible electronic devices because of the significant mechanical stresses they can experience during manufacturing and operation. These devices are typically…
Using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, we develop a framework to relate morphological properties and microscopic dynamics during island growth, coalescence, and initial formation of continuous heteroepitaxial films. The average island width…
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…
Molecular beam epitaxy enables the growth of thin film materials with novel properties and functionalities. Typically, the lattice constants of films and substrates are designed to match to minimise disorders and strains. However,…
The epitaxial growth of functional materials using a substrate with a graphene layer is a highly desirable method for improving structural quality and obtaining free-standing epitaxial nano-membranes for scientific study, applications, and…
Broadening the variety of two-dimensional (2D) materials and improving the synthesis of ultrathin films are crucial to the development of the semiconductor industry. As a state-of-the-art 2D material, Ga2Se2 has attractive optoelectronic…
The formation of coherent three-dimensional islands in highly mismatched epitaxy is discussed in terms of the traditional concept of wetting. It is shown that the wetting layer and the 3D islands represent different phases which cannot be…
We describe a theoretical study of the role of adsorbate interactions in island nucleation and growth, using Ag/Pt(111) heteroepitaxy as an example. From density-functional theory, we obtain the substrate-mediated Ag adatom pair interaction…
Smooth interfaces and surfaces are beneficial for most (opto)electronic devices based on thin films and their heterostructures. For example, smoother interfaces in (010) beta-Ga2O3/(AlxGa1-x)2O3 heterostructures, whose roughness is ruled by…
Research on two-dimensional materials has expanded over the past two decades to become a central theme in condensed matter research today. Significant advances have been made in the synthesis and subsequent reassembly of these materials…
The observed height distribution of clusters obtained in strained epitaxy has been often interpreted in terms of electronic effects. We show that some aspects can be explained classically by the interplay of strain and edge energies. We…
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,…
Owing to their unprecedented electronic properties, graphene and two-dimensional (2D) crystals have brought fresh opportunities for advances in planar spintronic devices. Graphene is an ideal medium for spin transport while also being an…
The naturally existing chalcogenide Bi2Se3 is topologically nontrivial due to the band inversion caused by strong spin-orbit coupling inside the bulk of the material. The surface states are spin polarized, protected by the time-inversion…
The crystallographic orientation of films grown on 2D-masked substrates is often used to infer the pathway among remote, van der Waals, and thru-hole (pinhole-seeded) epitaxy. However, attribution of a specific growth mechanism based on…
We use analytic formulae obtained from a simple model of crystal growth by molecular--beam epitaxy to determine step--edge barriers to interlayer transport. The method is based on information about the surface morphology at the onset of…
Understanding the sticking coefficient $\sigma$, i.e., the probability of an adatom sticking to a surface, is essential for controlling the stoichiometry during epitaxial film growth. However, $\sigma$ on monolayer graphene-covered surfaces…
Determining the electronic properties of nanoscopic, low-dimensional materials free of external influences is key to discovery and understanding of new physical phenomena. An example is the suspension of graphene, which has allowed access…
The unique electronic properties of graphene offer the possibility that it could replace silicon when microelectronics evolves to nanoelectronics. Graphene grown epitaxially on silicon carbide is particularly attractive in this regard…
Epitaxial growth of topological insulator Bi2Se3 thin films on nominally flat and vicinal Si(111) substrates is studied. In order to achieve planner growth front and better quality epifilms, a two-step growth method is adopted for the van…