2D versus 3D competition at the early stages of growth for Ge on Si(001) by molecular dynamics

The total energy of equilibrated pyramids layer by layer films and flat prepyramids in the epitaxial growth of Ge on Si (001) was investigated. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were applied to equilibrate the samples at atomic scale by the efficient code. It was shown that pyramids are more stable than Frank-van der Merwe (FM) films due to the partial strain relief.