Motion of contact line of a crystal over the edge of solid mask in epitaxial lateral overgrowth

Abstract

Mathematical model that allows for direct tracking of the homoepitaxial crystal growth out of the window etched in the solid, pre-deposited layer on the substrate is described. The growth is governed by the normal (to the crystal-vapor interface) flux from the vapor phase and by the interface diffusion. The model accounts for possibly inhomogeneous energy of the mask surface and for strong anisotropies of crystal-vapor interfacial energy and kinetic mobility. Results demonstrate that the motion of the crystal-mask contact line slows down abruptly as radius of curvature of the mask edge approaches zero. Numerical procedure is suggested to overcome difficulties associated with ill-posedness of the evolution problem for the interface with strong energy anisotropy.

Dewetting of an ultrathin solid film on a lattice-matched or amorphous substrate

“…After the low-energy orientations (0 • and 90 • ) have been formed the time steps required to track the evolution become very small, and the computation is interrupted. (Of course, this is the drawback of the current model based on the evolution equation for the surface height; better model would employ the parametric representation of the surface and will allow surface slopes of the 90 • and larger [35]. I am presently working on such model.…”

A tangent-plane marker-particle method for the computation of three-dimensional solid surfaces evolving by surface diffusion on a substrate

“…In this paper we describe a meshless particle method for computing evolving solid surfaces which are in contact with a material boundary (substrate) at all times [42,20,19]. In crystal growth such setup is universal, since all methods for thin film growth rely on deposition from the vapor phase or by means of atomic beams.…”