Facet growth under stress: the limits of strained-layer stability - art. no. 156101

A crystal facet is metastable under stress, but the process of growth or su blimation roughens the facet and is expected to render it unstable. This po ses a fundamental limit for heteroepitaxial growth of planar layers, e.g.. in semiconductor devices. An analysis shows that this facet-growth instabil ity can be suppressed to an arbitrary degree by growing slowly. Moreover, t he local stress ("force dipole") inherent in atomic steps introduces a new, purely kinetic effect that dominates at low strain and can render planar g rowth dynamically stable.