Self-organized epitaxial growth on spontaneously nano-patterned templates

Self-ordering at crystal surfaces has been the subject of intense efforts during the last ten years, since it has been recognized as a promising way for growing uniform nanostructures with regular sizes and spacings in the 1–100 nm range. In this article we give an overview of the self-organized nanostructures growth on spontaneously nano-patterned templates. A great variety of surfaces exhibits a nano-scale order at thermal equilibrium, including adsorbate-induced reconstruction, surface dislocations networks, vicinal surfaces or more complex systems. Continuum models have been proposed where long-range elastic interactions are responsible for spontaneous periodic domain formation. Today the comparison between experiments such as Grazing Incidence X-Ray Diffraction experiments and calculations has lead to a great improvement of our fundamental understanding of the physics of self-ordering at crystal surfaces. Then, epitaxial growth on self-ordered surfaces leads to nanostructures organized growth. The present knowledge of modelization of such an heterogeneous growth using multi-scaled calculations is discussed. Such a high quality of both long-range and local ordered growth opens up the possibility of making measurements of physical properties of such nanostructures by macroscopic integration techniques. To cite this article: S. Rousset et al., C. R. Physique 6 (2005).