The Relationship Between Atomic Structure and Strain Distribution of Misfit Dislocation Cores at Cubic Heteroepitaxial Interfaces

Abstract The atomic reconstruction of a misfit dislocation (MD) core causes change in the strain distribution around the core. Several MD cores at the AlSb/GaAs (001) cubic zincblende interface, including a symmetrical glide set Lomer dislocation (LD), a left-displaced glide set LD, a glide set LD with an atomic step, a symmetrical shuffle set LD, and a 60° dislocation pair, were studied using simulated projected potential and aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope images. Image deconvolution was also used to restore structure images from nonoptimum-defocus images. The corresponding biaxial strain maps,ε_xx(in-plane) andε_yy(out-of-plane), were obtained by geometric phase analysis using the GaAs substrate as the reference lattice. The results show that atomic structure characteristics of MD cores can be revealed by the strain maps. The strain maps should be measured from optimum-defocus images or restored structure images. Furthermore, theε_xxstrain map has been found more accurate than theε_yystrain map for MD cores, and the specimen thickness should be below the critical thickness due to the influence of dynamical scattering.