The distributions of the size of islands and of the capture zones are discussed comparatively, both experimentally and numerically, for the case of a sudden nucleation process with and without coarsening. The experiments were performed by growing InAs islands on GaAs(001) and the coarsening was altered by varying the temperature. In the two-dimensional kinetic Monte Carlo simulations a single-species diffusing adatom was taken into account, and the coarsening was altered in this case by modifying the binding energy between adatoms and islands. The results show that size and capture zone distributions overlap only when coarsening can be disregarded.

We report on the influence of surface reconstruction on silicon dopant incorporation and transport properties during molecular-beam epitaxy of GaAs(Bi) alloys. GaAs(Bi) growth with an (n × 3) reconstruction leads to n-type conductivity, while growth with a (2 × 1) reconstruction leads to p-type conductivity. We hypothesize that the presence or absence of surface arsenic dimers prevents or enables dopant incorporation into arsenic lattice sites. We consider the influence of bismuth anions on arsenic-dimer mediated dopant incorporation and the resulting electronic transport properties, demonstrating the applicability of this mechanism to mixed anion semiconductor alloys.

The current-induced spin polarization and momentum-dependent spin-orbit field were measured in In x Ga 1−x As epilayers with varying indium concentrations and silicon doping densities. Samples with higher indium concentrations and carrier concentrations and lower mobilities were found to have larger electrical spin generation efficiencies. Furthermore, current-induced spin polarization was detected in GaAs epilayers despite the absence of measurable spin-orbit fields, indicating that the extrinsic contributions to the spin polarization mechanism must be considered. Theoretical calculations based on a model that includes extrinsic contributions to the spin dephasing and the spin Hall effect, in addition to the intrinsic Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling, are found to qualitatively agree with the experimental results.

Images of uniform and upright nanowires are fascinating, but often, they are quite puzzling, when epitaxial templating from the substrate is clearly absent. Here, we reveal one such hidden growth guidance mechanism through a specific example -the case of ZnO nanowires grown on silicon oxide and glass. We show how electric fields exerted by the insulating substrate may be manipulated through the surface charge to define the orientation of the nanowires. Our results suggest that the growth of wurtzite semiconductors may often be described as a process of electric-charge-induced self assembly.

We show that, by changing and tuning the direction of the As flux on a rippled substrate, at temperatures higher than 530 degrees C and high As/In flux ratio, a selective growth of InAs dots can be obtained on GaAs. This is an undisclosed effect related to the Arsenic flux in the molecular beam epitaxial growth of InAs quantum dots (QDs) on GaAs(001). This effect cannot be explained by a shadowing effect, due to the gentle slopes of the mounds (1-3 degrees), and reveals instead that As plays a fundamental role at these growth conditions. We have developed a kinetic model, which takes into account the coupling between cations and anions, and found that the very small surface gradient in the anion flux, due to the oblique evaporation on the mounded surface, is responsible for a massive drain of cations toward the surface anion-rich areas, thus generating the selective growth of QDs