Strain-induced self-organization during semiconductor heteroepitaxy is an elegant, efficient, and flexible route towards the fabrication of uniform nanostructure arrays.
The exploitation of this phenomenon will require a fundamental understanding of the role of strain, surface energies, and surface mass transport in the formation and evolution of islands. We address these issues with multi-scale models of the growth of strained semiconductor thin films. Our approach is based on continuum equations derived from atomistic models that are known to account for the basic features of the strain-driven growth of quantum dots. Although continuum equations are best suited to mesoscale morphologies, their atomistic ancestry is embodied in the coefficients of the various terms in the equation. The application of these models to the morphological stability and evolution of quantum dots on patterned surfaces, which can be used to exert control over the densities and positions of quantum dots, will also be discussed.
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