Growth of germanium thin films on the W(100) surface

The growth of Ge thin films on the surface of a textured predominantly (100)-oriented tungsten ribbon is studied by thermal desorption spectrometry at different substrate temperatures over a wide range of coverages. The mechanism of growth of the Ge films at T = 300 K is similar to a layer-by-layer mechanism. For T > 300 K, the films grow through the Stranski-Krastanov mechanism, according to which the completion of the monolayer coverage is followed by the formation of three-dimensional crystallites; as a result, the desorption kinetics changes. For small coverages (i.e., in the absence of lateral interactions), the activation energy of Ge desorption from W(100) is E = 4.9 ± 0.2 eV. In a monolayer, this activation energy decreases to E = 3.9 ± 0.2 eV due to the repulsive lateral interactions. The energy of pairwise lateral interactions is determined to be ω = 0.3 eV.