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.
Sun
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LD
Institut für Experimentalphysik, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, A-4040 Linz, Austria.
Hohage
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Zeppenfeld
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Balderas-Navarro
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RE
Hingerl
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