Dynamics of elastically strained islands in presence of an anisotropic surface energy

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anisotropic surface energy influences the equilibrium and coarsening dynamics of strained semiconductor islands, revealing that anisotropy slows down the coarsening process through analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical model to quantify the impact of surface energy anisotropy on island coarsening, providing new insights into the dynamics of strained islands.

Findings

Anisotropy slows down island coarsening.

A simple model explains the effect of anisotropy on coarsening time.

Quasi-analytical description rationalizes the influence of anisotropy.

Abstract

The equilibrium solutions and coarsening dynamics of strained semi-conductor islands are investigated analytically and numerically. We develop an analytical model to study the effect of surface energy anisotropy on the dynamics coarsening of islands. We propose a simple model to explain the effect of this anisotropy on the coarsening time. We find that the anisotropy slows down the coarsening. This effect is rationalised using a quasi-analytical description of the island profile.