The homoepitaxial growth of multilayer Si thin film on Si(111) surfaces was simulated by Monte Carlo (MC) method with realistic growth model and physical parameters. Special emphasis was placed on revealing the influence of the Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barrier on the growth modes and morphologies. It is evident that there exists the ES barrier during multilayer Si thin film growth on Si (111) surface, which is deduced from the incomplete layer-by-layer growth process in the realistic experiments. The ES barrier EB=0.1～0.125 eV is estimated from the three-dimensional (3D) MC simulation and compared with the experimental results.
The processes of multilayer thin Cu films grown on Cu （100） surfaces at elevated temperature （250-400K） are simulated by mean of kinetic Monte Carlo （KMC） method, where the realistic growth model and physical parameters are used. The effects of small island （dimer and trimer） diffusion, edge diffusion along the islands, exchange of the adatom with an atom in the existing island, as well as mass transport between interlayers are included in the simulation model. Emphasis is placed on revealing the influence of the Ehrlic-Schwoebel （ES） barrier on growth mode and morphology during multilayer thin film growth. We present numerical evidence that the ES barrier does exist for the Cu/Cu（100） system and an ES barrier EB 〉 0.125eV is estimated from a comparison of the KMC simulation with the realistic experimental images. The transitions of growth modes with growth conditions and the influence of exchange barrier on growth mode are also investigated.
A comprehensive simulation model--deposition, diffusion, rotation and aggregation--is presented to demonstrate the post-deposition phenomena of multiple cluster growth on liquid surfaces, such as post-deposition nucleation, post- deposition growth and post-deposition coalescence. Emphasis is placed on the relaxations of monomer density, dimer density and cluster density as well as combined cluster-plus-monomer density with time after deposition ending. It is shown that post-deposition coalescence largely takes place after deposition due to the large mobility of clusters on liquid surfaces, while the post-deposition nucleation is only possible before the saturation cluster density is reached at the end of the deposition. The deposition flux and the moment of deposition ending play important roles in the post-deposition dynamics.
A kinetic Monte Carlo simulation is performed in order to study the effect of Sb atoms as a surfactant on the growth of Ag on Ag（111）. In our model the repulsive mechanism in which the surfactant Sb atoms repel diffusing Ag adatoms, and the exchange mechanism between Ag and Sb atoms, are considered. Our simulations show that the effects of Sb atoms for Ag/Ag（111） growth system are mainly to increase the chances for Ag atoms to overcome the Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier both in the interlayer growth and along the edge diffusion. The influence of the coverage of Sb atoms and substrate temperature on the growth of Ag/Sb/Ag（111） is discussed.
The initial stages of multilayer Co thin film grown on Cu(111) surface were simulated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) method, where the realistic growth model and physical parameters were presented. The effects of edge diffusion along the islands and mass transport between interlayers were included in the simulation model. Emphasis was placed on revealing the transition of growth morphology in heteroepitaxial Co/Cu(111) system with the changing of surface temperature. The simulation results show that the dendritic islands form at low temperature (T=210 K), while compact islands grow at room temperature (RT). The Volmer-Webber (three-dimensional, 3D) growth mode is presented due to the relative higher Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barrier. Our simulation results are in good agreement with the real scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments.
