Growth morphology and the equilibrium shape: The role of ‘‘surfactants’’ in Ge/Si island formation

Equilibrium shape of nickel crystal

“…So far, the appearance of unexpected surfaces, as in the case of {311} in copper [26] and germanium [27], has often been explained only qualitatively in terms of adsorption effect due to the presence of impurities or a surface-modifying atmosphere [30,31]. However, a decisive theoretical reasoning on the presence of such unexpected surfaces in ECS is still lacking.…”

“…For example, pure copper [26] and pure germanium [27] were reported to have additional surfaces in their ECS's, which were proposed as {311} facets whose energy is still considerably high in terms of the broken bond model. Though the unexpected surfaces were observed, the rank of the energies of each surface was always in conformity with that predicted by the model.…”

Nano-scale equilibrium crystal shapes

“…The formation of facets below the roughening temperature, and the Pakrovsky-Talapov predictions [26] for the edge shape (z(x)) of crystals have been demonstrated in a number of clean systems [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. In addition to studies on 3D crystals, there has been substantial work on the 2D ECS of islands [15,[35][36][37][38][39]] to obtain the edge free energy, equilibrium edge fluctuations and decay kinetics.…”

Shape transition in the epitaxial growth of gold silicide in Au thin films on Si(111)

“…Epitaxial growth on Br-passivated substrate assumes futher importance in the light of the recent spurt of activities on impurity (surfactant)-controlled epitaxial growth [17]. In the present work a 1200Å thin Au film was evaporated from a W basket onto a Br-passivated Si(111) substrate at room temperature in high vacuum (10 −6 Torr).…”