Strain oscillations probed with light.
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.
Institut für Experimentalphysik, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, A-4040 Linz, Austria.
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Sun
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Hohage
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Zeppenfeld
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Balderas-Navarro
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Hingerl