Universality in shape evolution of Si_1−xGe_x structures on high-index silicon surfaces

Institute of Physics - Sachivalaya Marg, Bhubaneswar - 751005, India

^(a) pvsatyam22@gmail.com
satyam@iopb.res.in

Received: 17 June 2012
Accepted: 3 September 2012

Abstract

The shape evolution of MBE grown Si_1−xGe_x islands on ultraclean reconstructed high-index Si(5 5 12), Si(5 5 7) and Si(5 5 3) surfaces has been studied experimentally and explained using a phenomenological kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulation. We show that a self-assembled growth at optimum thickness leads to interesting shape transformations, namely spherical islands to rectangular rods up to a critical size beyond which the symmetry of the structures is broken, resulting in a shape transition to elongated trapezoidal structures. We observe a universality in the growth dynamics in terms of aspect ratio and size exponent, for all three high-index surfaces, irrespective of the actual dimensions of Ge-Si structures. The shape evolution has been simulated using kMC by introducing a deviation parameter (ϵ) in the surface barrier term (E_D) to take the effect of anisotropic diffusion as one of the plausible mechanisms.