Related papers: Island nucleation in thin-film epitaxy: A first-pr…
We develop a theory for the inclusion of adatom interactions in second layer nucleation occurring in epitaxial growth. The interactions considered are due to ring barriers between pairs of adatoms and binding energies of unstable clusters.…
We present a model in which pit nucleation in thin films is considered to arise from a near-equilibrium nucleation process. In this model the adatom concentration plays a central role in controlling the morphological development of the…
We study the dynamics of island nucleation in the presence of adsorbates using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a two-species growth model. Adatoms (A-atoms) and impurities (B-atoms) are codeposited, diffuse and aggregate subject to…
We develop a theory of nucleation on top of two-dimensional islands bordered by steps with an additional energy barrier $\Delta E_S$ for descending atoms. The theory is based on the concept of the residence time of an adatom on the…
An extended elastic eigenvector approach for adatom interactions is applied to model Nitrogen c(2x2) Atom islands on Cu(001). Oscillating interactions between adatom monomers or dimers are considered. Attractive pair interactions of adatoms…
When two or more atoms bind to a solid surface, the substrate can mediate an interaction between them. In this paper, we use density-functional theory to quantify the substrate-mediated pair interaction between two adatoms on a…
A model of submonolayer thin film growth is studied, where the attachment of atoms to island edges is hindered by an energy barrier. A novel behavior of the density of islands, N_s, is predicted as a function of flux F and temperature T.…
The theoretical and experimental status of surfactant mediated semiconductor epitaxial growth is reviewed. We discuss homoepitaxy as well as heteroepitaxy, and emphasize in particular issues related to the mechanism by which surfactants…
We investigate island formation during heteroepitaxial growth using an atomistic model that incorporates deposition, activated diffusion and stress relaxation. For high misfit the system naturally evolves into a state characterized by a…
The results of a density-functional-theory study of the formation energies of (100)- and (111)-faceted steps on the Pt(111) surface, as well as of the barrier for diffusion of an adatom on the flat surface, are presented. The step formation…
We investigate the influence of intermixing on heteroepitaxial growth dynamics, using a two-dimensional point island model, expected to be a good approximation in the early stages of epitaxy. In this model, which we explore both…
We use atomistic simulations with an empirical potential (EAM) to study the elastic effects of heteroepitaxial islands on adatom diffusion. We measure the diffusion barrier on pure stressed substrate and near a misfit island, as well as the…
The decay of hexagonal Ag adatom islands on top of larger Ag adatom islands on a Ag(111) surface is followed by a fast scanning tunneling microscope. Islands do not always show the expected increase in decay rate with decreasing island…
The effects of adsorbates on nucleation and growth of two-dimensional islands is investigated by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations and rate equation theory. The variation of island morphology with adsorbate parameters is discussed and the…
We show that adsorbates on surfaces can form islands even if there are no attractive interactions. Instead strong repulsion between adsorbates at short distances can lead to islands, because such islands increase the entropy of the…
The nucleation and growth of two--dimensional islands is studied with Monte Carlo simulations of a pair--bond solid--on--solid model of epitaxial growth. The conventional description of this problem in terms of a well--defined critical…
The effect of impurities on epitaxial growth in the submonolayer regime is studied using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a two-species solid-on-solid growth model. Both species are mobile, and attractive interactions among adatoms and…
We demonstrate how first-principles calculations using density-functional theory (DFT) can be applied to gain insight into the molecular processes that rule the physics of materials processing. Specifically, we study the molecular beam…
We develop a theory for nucleation on top of islands in epitaxial growth based on the derivation of lifetimes and rates governing individual microscopic processes. These processes are strongly affected by the additional step edge barrier…
We have performed Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation work to study the effect of diffusion anisotropy, bonding anisotropy and edge diffusion on island formation at different temperatures during the sub-monolayer film growth in Molecular Beam…