The effect of monomer evaporation on a simple model of submonolayer growth

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model for thin film growth that incorporates particle evaporation, revealing how evaporation influences growth kinetics, island sizes, and distribution regimes through simulations and scaling analysis.

Contribution

The study presents a more general model of submonolayer growth that explicitly includes evaporation effects, extending previous models by Venables and Stoyanov.

Findings

Evaporation significantly alters growth kinetics.

Different regimes with distinct growth exponents are identified.

Island size distributions are affected by evaporation.

Abstract

We present a model for thin film growth by particle deposition that takes into account the possible evaporation of the particles deposited on the surface. Our model focuses on the formation of two-dimensional structures. We find that the presence of evaporation can dramatically affect the growth kinetics of the film, and can give rise to regimes characterized by different ``growth'' exponents and island size distributions. Our results are obtained by extensive computer simulations as well as through a simple scaling approach and the analysis of rate equations describing the system. We carefully discuss the relationship of our model with previous studies by Venables and Stoyanov of the same physical situation, and we show that our analysis is more general.