Off-lattice Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulations of Strained Heteroepitaxial Growth

Biehl, Michael; Much, Florian; Vey, Christian

doi:10.1007/3-7643-7343-1_4

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…2. Due to the Ehrlich-Schwoebel effect the diffusing particles on top of islands tend to form mounds instead of growing layer by layer [12,13]. At the critical adsorbate height the lateral distance between two neighboring mounds is not large enough to allow an additional particle between the mounds, as shown in the case (2).…”

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confidence: 88%

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Formation and consequences of misfit dislocations in heteroepitaxial growth

Walther

Biehl²,

Kinzel

2007

Phys. Status Solidi (c)

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We investigate the formation of misfit dislocations in strained heteroepitaxial crystal growth and their influence on the structure of the growing layers. We use Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for an off-lattice model in 1+1 dimensions with Lennard-Jones interactions. Two different types of the formation of dislocations are found, depending on the sign and the magnitude of the misfit. Misfit dislocations affect the lateral and the vertical lattice spacing in heteroepitaxial growth. In addition, we observe a correlation between the lateral position of buried dislocations and grown mounds, depending on the sign of the misfit.1 Introduction Due to its high technological relevance, epitaxial growth of semiconductor interfaces has become a field of intensive study in the past years. From a theoretical point of view, epitaxial growth is an example of cooperative behavior far from thermal equilibrium which is still an active field of research. Epitaxial layers of atoms and molecules can be realized by molecular beam epitaxy which allows to design high quality semiconductor structures on an atomic scale. In the case of heteroepitaxy, substrate and adsorbate consist of different materials and may differ in their lattice constants. This leads to interesting structures of the growing atomic layers. The first few adsorbate layers can grow pseudomorphically, i.e. coherently with the crystal structure of the substrate. But due to strain the elastic energy of the system rises with increasing adsorbate film thickness. At a critical layer thickness the strain is released by forming misfit dislocations.In this work the detailed mechanisms of the formation of dislocations are investigated with means of Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulations [1][2][3]. It is obvious that dislocations cannot be modelled properly with predefined lattice structures, hence we use an off-lattice model. Since we are interested in the general phenomenon of epitaxial growth competing with strain and dislocations, we use Lennard-Jones interactions. As a starting point, we investigate (1+1)-dimensional models with classical pair-interactions and lateral extensions of a few hundred lattice spacings. Even in this fairly limited framework we observe complex phenomena which can be compared with experiments and yield qualitative insights into heteroepitaxial growth. Following previous studies [3-6], we choose a pair potential to model the interactions between substrate and adsorbate particles and we apply an off-lattice algorithm to the simulation of the growth of heteroepitaxial layers in 1+1 dimensions.We have investigated the formation of dislocations as well as their influence on the vertical and the lateral lattice spacings. In addition, we found that buried dislocations have a pronounced influence on the surface structure of the subsequent growth.

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confidence: 88%

“…2. The number of dislocations increases with the misfit and the mean distance between dislocations is close to 1/ which reflects the relative periodicity of the substrate and adsorbate lattice [13].…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Formation and consequences of misfit dislocations in heteroepitaxial growth

Walther

Biehl²,

Kinzel

2007

Phys. Status Solidi (c)

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“…A simulation [15] of this process of strain-driven change in surface morphology with increasing deposition thickness is shown in Figure 26.1. The availability of RHEED in the MBE environment provides a convenient way to monitor the evolution of the 2D to 3D transition in-situ.…”

Section: The Stranski-krastanov Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lattice mismatch of 2.5% between GaN and AlN is a smaller value than that for InAs/GaAs, and the first report on the growth of GaN QDs used antisurfactant epitaxy [110]. Because this generally has deleterious consequences for optical devices, there has been a study of nitride QDs in other nonpolar crystal directions [113][114][115][116] along the (10-10) and (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) planes, and also various semipolar planes [117,118]. Although there is much less work available than on InAs/GaAs or Si/Ge, the III-nitride material combinations offer a fascinating playground for the study of selfassembled island growth due to some of their unique properties.…”

Section: Iii-nitridesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From understanding the basic nature of the self-assembly process to the use of QDs in advanced device structures, many different aspects of the subject have been reviewed in various books [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and scholarly review articles [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] over the years. From understanding the basic nature of the self-assembly process to the use of QDs in advanced device structures, many different aspects of the subject have been reviewed in various books [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and scholarly review articles [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] over the years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Self-Assembly in Semiconductor Epitaxy

Bhattacharya

Bansal

2015

Handbook of Crystal Growth

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Lattice Gas Models and Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulations of Epitaxial Growth

Biehl

Multiscale Modeling in Epitaxial Growth

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A brief introduction is given to Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations of epitaxial crystal growth. Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) serves as the prototype example for growth far from equilibrium. However, many of the aspects discussed here would carry over to other techniques as well. A variety of approaches to the modeling and simulation of epitaxial growth have been applied. They range from the detailed quantum mechanics treatment of microscopic processes to the coarse grained description in terms of stochastic differential equations or other continuum approaches. Here, the focus is on discrete representations such as lattice gas and Solid-On-Solid (SOS) models. The basic ideas of the corresponding Kinetic Monte Carlo methods are presented. Strengths and weaknesses become apparent in the discussion of several levels of simplification that are possible in this context.

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Off-lattice Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulations of Strained Heteroepitaxial Growth

Cited by 12 publications

References 39 publications

Formation and consequences of misfit dislocations in heteroepitaxial growth

Formation and consequences of misfit dislocations in heteroepitaxial growth

Self-Assembly in Semiconductor Epitaxy

Lattice Gas Models and Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulations of Epitaxial Growth

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