Monte Carlo study of the elastic interaction in heteropitaxial growth

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to analyze how elastic interactions influence island size distribution and spatial correlations during heteroepitaxial growth, revealing self-organization tendencies and size distribution peaks.

Contribution

It provides an exact treatment of the system's energy with periodic boundary conditions and explores the impact of elastic interactions on island growth patterns.

Findings

Pronounced peak in island size distribution indicating self-organization

Peak widens with increasing system coverage

Elastic interactions significantly affect island size and spatial correlations

Abstract

We have studied the island size distribution and spatial correlation function of an island growth model under the effect of an elastic interaction of the form $1/r^{3}$. The mass distribution $P_n(t)$ that was obtained presents a pronounced peak that widens with the increase of the total coverage of the system, $\theta$. The presence of this peak is an indication of the self-organization of the system, since it demonstrates that some sizes are more frequent than others. We have treated exactly the energy of the system using periodic boundary conditions which were used in the Monte-Carlo simulations. A discussion about the effect of different factors is presented.