Self-organization and nanostructure formation in chemical vapor deposition.

When thin films are grown on a substrate by chemical vapor deposition, the evolution of the first deposited layers may be described, on mesoscopic scales, by dynamical models of the reaction-diffusion type. For monatomic layers, such models describe the evolution of atomic coverage due to the combined effect of reaction terms representing adsorption-desorption and chemical processes and nonlinear diffusion terms that are of the Cahn-Hilliard type. This combination may lead, below a critical temperature, to the instability of uniform deposited layers. This instability triggers the formation of nanostructures corresponding to regular spatial variations of substrate coverage. Patterns wavelengths and symmetries are selected by dynamical variables and not by variational arguments. According to the balance between reaction- and diffusion-induced nonlinearities, a succession of nanostructures including hexagonal arrays of dots, stripes, and localized structures of various types may be obtained. These structures may initiate different growth mechanisms, including Volmer-Weber and Frank-Van der Merwe types of growth. The relevance of this approach to the study of deposited layers of different species is discussed.