Numerical simulation of anisotropic elastic fields of a GaAs/GaAs twist boundary

Self‐assembled nanostructures are particularly interesting for optoelectronic and photonic applications, especially on silicon and GaAs substrates. Nevertheless, their long‐range spatial distribution is random, their density is difficult to control, their size distribution can be large and their shapes can be different. By overcoming these drawbacks, it should be possible to improve the performances of existing devices or to fabricate new ones. This work studies the possibility to order on a long range self‐assembled nanostructures on a GaAs substrate, by means of the elastic fields induced at the surface by shallowly buried periodic dislocation networks. The needed strain and stress fields, generated by a square network of screw dislocations located between a finite layer of GaAs bonded onto a semi‐infinite GaAs substrate, are calculated using anisotropic elasticity. The results obtained are compared to those obtained using isotropic elasticity. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)