Nonlinear dynamics of island coarsening and stabilization during strained film heteroepitaxy.

Nonlinear evolution of three-dimensional strained islands or quantum dots in heteroepitaxial thin films is studied via a continuum elasticity model and both perturbation analysis of the system and numerical simulations of the corresponding nonlinear dynamic equation governing the film morphological profile. Three regimes of island array evolution are identified and examined, including a film instability regime at early stage, a nonlinear coarsening regime at intermediate times, and the crossover to a saturated asymptotic state, with detailed behavior depending on film-substrate misfit strains but not qualitatively on finite system sizes. The phenomenon of island array stabilization, which corresponds to the formation of steady but nonordered arrays of strained quantum dots, occurs at later time for smaller misfit strain.