ATG Instability
The ATG (Asaro-Tiller-Grinfeld) instability, also known as the Grinfeld instability, is an elastic instability often encountered during molecular beam epitaxy. If there is a mismatch between the lattice sizes of the growing film and the supporting crystal, elastic energy will be accumulated in the growing film. At some critical height, the free energy of the film can be lowered if the film breaks into isolated islands, where the tension can be relaxed laterally. The critical height depends on Young's moduli, mismatch size, and surface tensions.
Some applications for this instability have been researched, such as the self-assembly of quantum dot. This community uses the name of Stranski–Krastanov growth for ATG.
Read more about this topic: Molecular Beam Epitaxy
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