Growth of epitaxial nanowires by controlled coarsening of strained islands

摘要

We show that elongated nanowires can be grown on crystal surfaces by allowinglarge strained two-dimensional islands to desorb by varying the adatomsupersaturation or chemical potential. The width of the wires formed in thisprocess is determined by a competition between the repulsive elasticinteractions of the long edges of the wires and the thermodynamic driving forcewhich tends to decrease the distance between these edges. The proposedmechanism allows for control of the wire sizes by changing the growthconditions, in particular, the vapor pressure of the material that is beingdeposited.