In lateral growth of a crystalline layer on a foreign substrate, by successive nucleation at the concave corner of crystal facet and substrate, consecutive rotation of crystallographic orientation of the crystalline layer can be observed. Such a consecutive rotation of crystallographic orientation may lead to a number of effects, such as the spatial periodic faceting-roughening transitions and regular zigzag growth (Consecutive rotation of crystallographic orientation in lateral growth, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 125505 (2005); Fractal aggregations at low driving force with strong anisotropy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 3089 (1998); Nucleation-mediated lateral growth on foreign substrate, J. Phys. Chem. C, 111, 1071-1075 (2007)). The physical origin of these effects is the imbalance of surface/interface tensions at the concave corner, which deforms the embryo of nucleus at the concave corner and changes the crystallographic orientation layer-by-layer. A theoretical model is provided, which predicts a criterion to observe such an effect in the nucleation-mediated lateral growth. The theoretical expectations are consistent with the experimental observations. The corner-mediated growth may also contribute to the unexpected pattern formation of hierarchical windmill structure of ZnO (Microscopic view of the role of repeated polytypism in self-organization of hierarchical nanostructures, Phys. Rev. B87, 085306 (2013)). This effect can be applied further to generate regular nanosized metallic wire arrays (Creating in-plane metallic-nanowire arrays by corner-mediated electrodeposition, Adv. Mater.,21, 3576 (2009)).

• Legal notice:
  

  Copyright (c) Pielaszek Research, all rights reserved.
  The above materials, including auxiliary resources, are subject to Publisher's copyright and the Author(s) intellectual rights. Without limiting Author(s) rights under respective Copyright Transfer Agreement, no part of the above documents may be reproduced without the express written permission of Pielaszek Research, the Publisher. Express permission from the Author(s) is required to use the above materials for academic purposes, such as lectures or scientific presentations.
  In every case, proper references including Author(s) name(s) and URL of this webpage: https://science24.com/paper/29965 must be provided.