Lattice relaxation of dimer islands on Ge(001) during homoepitaxy by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract

In low-temperature pulsed growth two-dimensional islands form and coarsen into ∼10 nm features. The islands produce well-defined displaced x-ray diffraction peaks due to relaxation of anisotropic surface stress of the (2×1) reconstruction with expansion and contraction present in orthogonal directions. We infer that the island distribution differs from continuous deposition, enhancing the population of size selected islands exhibiting anisotropic relaxation. The relaxation carries over into multilevel islands, suggesting that domains in subsequent layers form metastable stress domains.