10 research outputs found
A Coupled Equations Model for Epitaxial Growth on Textured Surfaces
We have developed a continuum model that explains the complex surface shapes
observed in epitaxial regrowth on micron scale gratings. This model describes
the dependence of the surface morphology on film thickness and growth
temperature in terms of a few simple atomic scale processes including adatom
diffusion, step-edge attachment and detachment, and a net downhill migration of
surface adatoms. The continuum model reduces to the linear part of the
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation with a flux dependent smoothing coefficient in the
long wavelength limit.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to the Journal of Crystal Growt
Direct observation of micron-scale ordered structure in a two-dimensional electron system
We have applied a novel scanned probe method to directly resolve the interior
structure of a GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron system in a tunneling
geometry. We find that the application of a perpendicular magnetic field can
induce surprising density modulations that are not static as a function of the
field. Near six and four filled Landau levels, stripe-like structures emerge
with a characteristic wave length ~2 microns. Present theories do not account
for ordered density modulations on this length scale.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Stress-driven instability in growing multilayer films
We investigate the stress-driven morphological instability of epitaxially
growing multilayer films, which are coherent and dislocation-free. We construct
a direct elastic analysis, from which we determine the elastic state of the
system recursively in terms of that of the old states of the buried layers. In
turn, we use the result for the elastic state to derive the morphological
evolution equation of surface profile to first order of perturbations, with the
solution explicitly expressed by the growth conditions and material parameters
of all the deposited layers. We apply these results to two kinds of multilayer
structures. One is the alternating tensile/compressive multilayer structure,
for which we determine the effective stability properties, including the effect
of varying surface mobility in different layers, its interplay with the global
misfit of the multilayer film, and the influence of asymmetric structure of
compressive and tensile layers on the system stability. The nature of the
asymmetry properties found in stability diagrams is in agreement with
experimental observations. The other multilayer structure that we study is one
composed of stacked strained/spacer layers. We also calculate the kinetic
critical thickness for the onset of morphological instability and obtain its
reduction and saturation as number of deposited layers increases, which is
consistent with recent experimental results. Compared to the single-layer film
growth, the behavior of kinetic critical thickness shows deviations for upper
strained layers.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures; Phys. Rev. B, in pres
Epitaxial growth in dislocation-free strained alloy films: Morphological and compositional instabilities
The mechanisms of stability or instability in the strained alloy film growth
are of intense current interest to both theorists and experimentalists. We
consider dislocation-free, coherent, growing alloy films which could exhibit a
morphological instability without nucleation. We investigate such strained
films by developing a nonequilibrium, continuum model and by performing a
linear stability analysis. The couplings of film-substrate misfit strain,
compositional stress, deposition rate, and growth temperature determine the
stability of film morphology as well as the surface spinodal decomposition. We
consider some realistic factors of epitaxial growth, in particular the
composition dependence of elastic moduli and the coupling between top surface
and underlying bulk of the film. The interplay of these factors leads to new
stability results. In addition to the stability diagrams both above and below
the coherent spinodal temperature, we also calculate the kinetic critical
thickness for the onset of instability as well as its scaling behavior with
respect to misfit strain and deposition rate. We apply our results to some real
growth systems and discuss the implications related to some recent experimental
observations.Comment: 26 pages, 13 eps figure
Surface Localization of Buried III–V Semiconductor Nanostructures
In this work, we study the top surface localization of InAs quantum dots once capped by a GaAs layer grown by molecular beam epitaxy. At the used growth conditions, the underneath nanostructures are revealed at the top surface as mounding features that match their density with independence of the cap layer thickness explored (from 25 to 100 nm). The correspondence between these mounds and the buried nanostructures is confirmed by posterior selective strain-driven formation of new nanostructures on top of them, when the distance between the buried and the superficial nanostructures is short enough (d = 25 nm)
Calibrated Image Appearance Reproduction
Managing the appearance of images across different display environments is a difficult problem, exacerbated by the proliferation of high dynamic range imaging technologies. Tone reproduction is often limited to luminance adjustment and is rarely calibrated against psychophysical data, while color appearance modeling addresses color reproduction in a calibrated manner, albeit over a limited luminance range. Only a few image appearance models bridge the gap, borrowing ideas from both areas. Our take on scene reproduction reduces computational complexity with respect to the state-of-the-art, and adds a spatially varying model of lightness perception. The predictive capabilities of the model are validated against all psychophysical data known to us, and visual comparisons show accurate and robust reproduction for challenging high dynamic range scenes