J Appl Phys 2005,98(7):074904.CrossRef 25. Deal BE, Grove AS: General relationship for the thermal oxidation of silicon. J Appl Phys 1965,36(12):3770–3778.CrossRef NU7026 26. Brunner K: Si/Ge

nanostructures. Rep Prog Phys 2002, 65:27–72.CrossRef 27. Medeiors-Ribeiro G, Williams RS: Thermodynamics of coherently-strained GexSi1-x nanocrystals on Si(001): alloy composition and island formation. Nano Lett 2007,7(2):223–235.CrossRef 28. Plummer JD, Deal MD, Griffin PB: Silicon VLSI Technology: Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling. New Jersey: Prentice Hall; 2000. 29. Enomoto T, Ando R, Morita H: Thermal oxidation rate of a Si 3 N 4 film and its masking effect against oxidation of silicon. Jpn J Appl Phys 1978, 17:1049–1058.CrossRef 30. Flint PS: The rates of oxidation of silicon. PF-4708671 Los Angeles: Paper presented at the Spring Meeting of The Electrochemical Society, Abstract No. 94; 1962. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions CW carried out the TEM experimentation and analysis. PL and MK carried out the Ge QD growth and kinetics analysis. TG conceived the mechanism of Ge QD explosion

and drafted the manuscript. PL conceived the study, supervised the work, contributed to data analysis and the manuscript preparation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
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