Model for molecular-beam-epitaxy growth over nonplanar surfaces

A model for molecular-beam-epitaxy growth is proposed to describe the morphology formed on a nonplanar, profiled surface that may consist of multifaceted crystal structures. Anisotropy of growth rate is introduced as a main factor for explaining the observed growth morphology. We show that on the nonplanar surface, the migration of adatoms modifies the growth rate at each point of the growing surface and thus affects the formation of the morphology within the range of migration length. The model can successfully describe the growth behavior including the development of sharp facet edges, since it is formulated in terms of a difference (rather than differential) equation which does not require the continuity of surface slope. The morphology simulated on the basis of this model agrees to experimental results of GaAs growth.