Full text

Turn on search term navigation

Copyright Nature Publishing Group Jun 2016

Abstract

Most of our knowledge of dislocation-mediated stress relaxation during epitaxial crystal growth comes from the study of inorganic heterostructures. Here we use Bragg coherent diffraction imaging to investigate a contrasting system, the epitaxial growth of calcite (CaCO3 ) crystals on organic self-assembled monolayers, where these are widely used as a model for biomineralization processes. The calcite crystals are imaged to simultaneously visualize the crystal morphology and internal strain fields. Our data reveal that each crystal possesses a single dislocation loop that occupies a common position in every crystal. The loops exhibit entirely different geometries to misfit dislocations generated in conventional epitaxial thin films and are suggested to form in response to the stress field, arising from interfacial defects and the nanoscale roughness of the substrate. This work provides unique insight into how self-assembled monolayers control the growth of inorganic crystals and demonstrates important differences as compared with inorganic substrates.

Details

Title
Strain-relief by single dislocation loops in calcite crystals grown on self-assembled monolayers
Author
Ihli, Johannes; Clark, Jesse N; Côté, Alexander S; Kim, Yi-yeoun; Schenk, Anna S; Kulak, Alexander N; Comyn, Timothy P; Chammas, Oliver; Harder, Ross J; Duffy, Dorothy M; Robinson, Ian K; Meldrum, Fiona C
Pages
11878
Publication year
2016
Publication date
Jun 2016
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1796698870
Copyright
Copyright Nature Publishing Group Jun 2016