Strain oscillations probed with light Article uri icon

abstract

  • We show that reflectance difference spectroscopy (RDS) is sensitive to the inhomogeneous surface and thin film strain which builds up during hetero- and homoepitaxial growth. The RDS signal is affected by the local, mean square atomic displacements in the substrate resulting from the stress relaxation of strained adlayer islands. For layer-by-layer growth an oscillatory variation of the RDS intensity is observed. These results demonstrate the potentiality of RDS to probe the growth kinetics on structurally anisotropic surfaces. © 2006 The American Physical Society.

publication date

  • 2006-01-01