Graphene-assisted spontaneous relaxation towards dislocation-free heteroepitaxy
Although conventional homoepitaxy forms high-quality epitaxial layers 1 – 5 , the limited set of material systems for commercially available wafers restricts the range of materials that can be grown homoepitaxially. At the same time, conventional heteroepitaxy of lattice-mismatched systems produces...
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Published in | Nature nanotechnology Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 272 - 276 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
01.04.2020
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Although conventional homoepitaxy forms high-quality epitaxial layers
1
–
5
, the limited set of material systems for commercially available wafers restricts the range of materials that can be grown homoepitaxially. At the same time, conventional heteroepitaxy of lattice-mismatched systems produces dislocations above a critical strain energy to release the accumulated strain energy as the film thickness increases. The formation of dislocations, which severely degrade electronic/photonic device performances
6
–
8
, is fundamentally unavoidable in highly lattice-mismatched epitaxy
9
–
11
. Here, we introduce a unique mechanism of relaxing misfit strain in heteroepitaxial films that can enable effective lattice engineering. We have observed that heteroepitaxy on graphene-coated substrates allows for spontaneous relaxation of misfit strain owing to the slippery graphene surface while achieving single-crystalline films by reading the atomic potential from the substrate. This spontaneous relaxation technique could transform the monolithic integration of largely lattice-mismatched systems by covering a wide range of the misfit spectrum to enhance and broaden the functionality of semiconductor devices for advanced electronics and photonics.
The spontaneous relaxation of misfit strain achieved on graphene-coated substrates enables the growth of heteroepitaxial single-crystalline films with reduced dislocation density. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 National Science Foundation (NSF) USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office EE0008558 Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) |
ISSN: | 1748-3387 1748-3395 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41565-020-0633-5 |