Surface energy anisotropy in strained materials

The driving mechanisms for the island vertical correlation have been the subject of extensive studies over the past years. Because the buried islands produce a nonuniform strain field at the surface of the spacer layer, i.e. the regions above the islands are tensely strained while the regions in between islands remain compressed, exciting models have treated the island distribution at the spacer layer surface by considering the effect of such a strain field on surface diffusion [4] or on island nucleation [3]. Recent calculations have taken into account the effect of the elastic anisotropy of the materials [16], the surface energy [18] or the elastic interaction between the buried islands with newly deposited ones [19]. However, in all of the above models it was assumed that the surface of the spacer layer becomes perfectly flat before the deposition of a new layer. From the experimental point of view, this... 

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