Epitaxy pseudomorphic growth

At low coverages, most metallic adsorbates form ordered overlayers with a (1 x 1) surface structure on metal substrates. This implies that the substrate acts as a template and has a significant influence on the growth mode of the deposited material. This effect is usually called epitaxial growth. A more restricted definition of epitaxial growth would include only those examples where the substrate imposes its own crystal structure, orientation, and lattice parameter on the adsorbed overlayer. (This restricted definition is also called pseudomorphic growth.)... 

One of the most frequently observed phenomena in epitaxial growth is the formation of strain relief patterns. These are caused by the mismatch of the unit cell size of the substrate and the deposited film. In many cases the strain or stress, which is imposed on the thin film by fhe subsfrafe lattice is relieved by reconstruction of the film. This reconsfrucfion can but must not necessarily lead to a nanopatterned film. An inferesfing example is the growth of Ag on Pt(l 11) (see Fig. 10) [41]. It has been shown for this particular system that the first Ag layer grows pseudomorphically exhibiting an isotropic compressive strain of 4.3% whereas in higher layers this strain is relieved by the formation of a dislocation network [42-47]. In order to improve the long-... 

Crystals frequently do not grow in perfect single crystals that contain one or more CTystal forms. There are many deviations from such normality, only four of which will be discussed here parallel growth, twinning, epitaxy, and pseudomorphism. The first two involve crystals of the same compound, whereas in the latter two another compound is involved. 

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