Self-organization of three-dimensional lead telluride nanoislands under conditions close to thermodynamic equilibrium

摘要

Three-dimensional lead telluride (PbTe) nanoislands were grown on (111)BaF2 substrates by hot-wall epitaxy (HWE) from vapor phase under conditions close to thermodynamic equilibrium and their surface morphology was studied by atomic force microscopy in various growth stages, including the initial stage of nucleation and the subsequent evolution of the size and shape of nanoislands. The distributions of island dimensions in the samples grown under various thermodynamic conditions were statistically analyzed. It is shown that the proposed HWE method ensures the formation of dense (similar to 8 x 10(10) cm(-2)) self-organized arrays of PbTe quantum dots with parameters comparable with those of the quantum dots of the same material grown by molecular beam epitaxy according to the Volmer-Weber mechanism. (C) 2005 Pleiades Publishing, Inc.