[3] By SAE, semiconductor nanostructures such as quantum dots and nanowires can be grown to their designed places.
The patterns (holes) in the mask are fabricated using standard microfabrication techniques lithography and etching.
Variety of lithography and etching techniques can be implemented to SAE mask fabrication.
Suitable techniques depend on the pattern feature size and used materials.
This is employed in template assisted selective area epitaxy (TASE), where deep patterns in the mask are used as a template for the whole semiconductor structure and the growth is stopped before the mask level.
The main principle in ELO is to reduce the defects caused by lattice mismatch of the substrate and the grown semiconductor.