Effect of surface-energy anisotropy on the kinetics of quantum dot formation

Dynamic continuum simulations of self-organized InAs quantum dot (QD) growth due to competing elastic and surface energetics are presented. The effect of varying the orientational dependence of the surface energy is investigated. It is found that the growth process is very sensitive to the detailed form of this relationship. Smoothly varying anisotropic surface energy functions can be chosen to produce equilibrum QDs of the correct size, shape and, distribution, but the kinetics of the growth process does not agree well with experimental observation. Surface-energy functions with sharp, cusped minima, however, reproduce many of the features of observed growth kinetics and also lead to the development of expected QD morphologies.