Dislocation patterning in PbTe on PbSe (001) hetero-epitaxy was studied using scanning tunneling microscopy. It was shown that exceedingly regular square arrays of misfit dislocations were formed during strain relaxation. This was based on the existence of a homogeneous dislocation nucleation process, a high dislocation mobility within the interface, and an effective repulsive interaction between neighboring dislocations. Similar results were expected also for other highly mismatched hetero-epitaxial systems.

Nanoscale Dislocation Patterning in PbTe/PbSe(001) Lattice-Mismatched Heteroepitaxy. G.Springholz, K.Wiesauer: Physical Review Letters, 2002, 88[1], 015507 (4pp)