Abstract
The pair interaction between Ge islands on vicinal Si(001) substrates is investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy measurements as a function of the miscut angle. By the analysis of the nearest-neighbor island distributions, we assess the dependence of the local strain field on the substrate misorientation. We support our results by modeling elastic relaxation for different shapes and arrangements of islands with finite element calculations.
- Received 17 December 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.81.113409
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