Analysis of morphological evolution of crystalline domains in nonequilibrium shape by using minimization of effective surface energy

Effective surface energy is proposed to analyze the morphological evolution of crystalline domains in nonequilibrium shape. This concept can be used to determine how favorable the formation of a certain crystallographic face is when a crystalline domain is grown even in kinetically limited conditions by incorporating various kinetic effects on the corresponding crystallographic face into the actual surface energy of that face. In this work, it is experimentally demonstrated that this concept, applied to the m-oriented GaN faceted domains grown under kinetically limited conditions on SiO₂-patterned m-plane sapphire substrates, can successfully describe the morphological evolution of those GaN faceted domains in nonequilibrium shape. This method can give a new insight into the morphological analysis of crystalline domains in nonequilibrium shape.