Heteroepitaxial Growth of Colloidal Crystals: Dependence of the Growth Mode on the Interparticle Interactions and Lattice Spacing

Epitaxial growth is one of the most important techniques for the control of crystal growth, especially for growing thin-film semiconductor crystals. Similarly, colloidal epitaxy, a template-assisted self-assembly method, is a powerful technique for controlling the structure of colloidal crystals. In this study, heteroepitaxial growth, which differs from homoepitaxial growth of conventional colloidal epitaxy, using foreign colloidal crystals as a substrate, was used to grow single-component colloidal crystal films. The Frank-van der Merwe (FM), Stranski-Krastanov (SK), and Volmer-Weber (VW) modes were observed, and the mode varied with the lattice-misfit ratio and interparticle interactions between the substrate and epitaxial phase. The transition of the growth mode (from SK to VW) and the coexistence of different growth modes (FM and VW) were observed, and their processes were revealed by in situ observation. Colloidal heteroepitaxy was confirmed to be useful for controlling structure, which will enable exploration of novel colloidal self-assembly structures.