Quasidendritic growth due to elastic fields

A model is proposed to explain the quasidendritic growth of Co islands deposited on a Pt(111) surface observed in the experiments made by Grutter and Durig in 1995. We simulate the growth of the Co islands using a Ginzburg-Landau approach. The elastic field is eliminated from the problem using the condition of mechanical equilibrium. The anisotropy of the lattice strain is shown to have a profound impact on the morphology of the domain growth. We first outline the method and the resulting equations. Preliminary numerical results showing a qualitative resemblance between their experimental results and our simulations are presented.