Epitaxial self-assembled quantum dots (SAQDs) are of both technological andfundamental interest, but their reliable manufacture still presents a technicalchallenge. To better understand the formation, morphology and ordering ofepitaxial self-assembled quantum dots (SAQDs), it is essential to have anaccurate model that can aid further experiments and predict the trends in SAQDformation. SAQDs form because of the destabilizing effect of elastic mismatchstrain, but most analytic models and some numerical models of SAQD formationeither assume an elastically homogeneous anisotropic film-substrate system orassume an elastically heterogeneous isotropic system. In this work, we performthe full film-substrate elastic calculation. Then we incorporate the elasticitycalculation into a stochastic linear growth model. We find that usinghomogeneous elasticity can cause errors in the elastic energy density as largeas 26%, and for typical modeling parameters lead to errors of about 11% in theestimated value of average dot spacing. We also quantify the effect of elasticheterogeneity on the order estimates of SAQDs and confirm previous finding onthe possibility of order enhancement by growing a film near the critical filmheight.
展开▼
