The Role of Misfit Dislocation During Epitaxial Growth

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Abstract
The theory of Frank and van der Merwe (FM) in 1949 showed that a minimum energy criterion could explain the pseudomorphic growth of a deposit on a substrate of different lattice spacing and the subsequent relief of strain by misfit dislocations as the deposit thickness increases. Although the “equilibrium” theory is qualitatively correct, account must be taken of actual dislocation sources, which may be complex, and which may be more or less efficient for misfit relief than predicted by the FM model. Moreover, misfit dislocation sources may determine the morphology of the growing film, the interface topology and even the atomic structure of the deposit/substrate interface. These various roles of misfit dislocations are reviewed here with examples from work on metal/metal, semiconductor/semiconductor and metal/semiconductor systems.

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