Kinetics of shape equilibration for two-dimensional islands

TL;DR

This study uses kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to investigate how two-dimensional atomic islands relax to equilibrium, revealing different mechanisms at high and low temperatures, with nucleation limiting relaxation at low temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a new understanding that at low temperatures, relaxation is limited by nucleation on facets, challenging the traditional curvature-driven diffusion model.

Findings

Different temperature regimes show distinct relaxation mechanisms.

Nucleation controls relaxation at low temperatures.

Activation energy and size dependence explained by nucleation process.

Abstract

We study the relaxation to equilibrium of two dimensional islands containing up to 20000 atoms by Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the commonly assumed relaxation mechanism - curvature-driven relaxation via atom diffusion - cannot explain the results obtained at low temperatures, where the island edges consist in large facets. Specifically, our simulations show that the exponent characterizing the dependence of the equilibration time on the island size is different at high and low temperatures, in contradiction with the above cited assumptions. Instead, we propose that - at low temperatures - the relaxation is limited by the nucleation of new atomic rows on the large facets : this allows us to explain both the activation energy and the island size dependence of the equilibration time.