Abstract
The equilibrium morphology of a two-dimensional (2D) heteroepitaxial adsorbate on a semi-infinite elastic substrate is studied by means of a hybridized method of stress relaxation dynamics in the epitaxial layer and the elastic Green’s function in the substrate. With a small misfit f and a spontaneous surface stress σ0, the epitaxial adsorbate shows a Stranski–Krastanov (SK) configuration with a wetting first layer and islands on further layers. By comparing the results with a rigid substrate, we found that the softness of the substrate turns out to weaken the self-limiting effect of the island size, and the SK islands are found to coarsen indefinitely in the present 2D system.
