A simple solid-on-solid model of epitaxial thin films growth: inhomogeneous multilayered sandwiches

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple SOS model for inhomogeneous epitaxial film growth, analyzing how atomic interactions and barriers influence film roughness, layer bridging, and magnetic coupling in multilayered systems through computer simulations.

Contribution

It presents a novel SOS model incorporating local relaxation and barriers, providing insights into multilayer film growth, roughness, and magnetic layer bridging.

Findings

Barrier strength affects film roughness.

Bridging influences magnetic coupling.

Spacer thickness variation impacts uniformity.

Abstract

In this work a simple solid-on-solid (SOS) model of inhomogeneous films epitaxial growth is presented. The results of the computer simulations based on the random deposition (RD) enriched by a local relaxation which tends to maximize the number of a particle-particle lateral bonds (PPLB) against barriers blocking diffusion are presented. The influence of strength of the atoms interactions and barriers for diffusion on film roughness and possible bridges between the layers in tri-layered sandwich system are considered. For magnetic layers with a nonmagnetic spacer the bridging is responsible for direct magnetic coupling between layers. Also variations of the spacer thickness, when scanning the film surface, is essential for uniformity of the magnetic coupling between the layers. Number of bridges for very thin spacer, and variation of the spacer thickness are discussed in this work.