Enhanced relaxation and intermixing in Ge islands grown on pit-patterned Si(001) substrates

We compare elastic relaxation and Si-Ge distribution in epitaxial islands grown on both pit-patterned and flat Si(001) substrates. Anomalous x-ray diffraction yields that nucleation in the pits provides a higher relaxation. Using an innovative, model-free fitting procedure based on self-consistent solutions of the elastic problem, we provide compositional and elastic-energy maps. Islands grown on flat substrates exhibit stronger composition gradients and do not show a monotonic decrease of elastic energy with height. Both phenomena are explained using both thermodynamic and kinetic arguments.