We are interested in physics and chemistry of single crystal surfaces, in particular in epitaxial self-assembly of functional nanostructures: their nucleation, growth, properties, and characterization. For example, we are currently focusing on magnetic nanostructures.

Surface atomistic processes and phenomena such as adsorption, desorption, diffusion, segregation, nucleation and growth, phase transitions, self-assembly and self-organization at surface steps and terraces, play a key role in homo- and hetero-epitaxial crystal growth, heterogeneous catalysis, and other fields important in science and technology.

We explore the effects of epitaxial strain due to lattice or symmetry mismatch on the growing layer or island crystalline perfection, size, defects, and properties. For example, Ge/Si(001) is a classical example of a Stranski-Krastanov growth, where the initial two-dimensional wetting layer grows pseudomorphically, i.e.strained due to 4.2% Ge/Si lattice mismatch, and then when certain critical layer thickness is exceeded – three dimensional pyramidal or hut-shape nanometric islands nucleate on top of it (Fig. 1 ).

We are especially interested in mesoscopic and nanoscopic self-ordering of epitaxial islands 
in geometrically well-defined patterns, using self-templated substrates, e.g., stepped vicinal surfaces, as exemplified by self-ordering of CoSi2 nanoislands (ordered CoSi2 islands in the bottom figure.