A simple solid-on-solid model of epitaxial film growth: submonolayer substrate coverage

TL;DR

This study models epitaxial film growth with a simple solid-on-solid approach, revealing how substrate temperature influences surface morphology transitions from small islands to anisotropic structures, aligning well with existing simulations and experimental data.

Contribution

Introduces a basic solid-on-solid model incorporating anisotropic surface diffusion to analyze temperature-driven morphological transitions in epitaxial film growth.

Findings

Surface morphology shifts from isotropic islands to anisotropic structures with increasing temperature.

Height-height correlation functions reflect morphological transitions.

Qualitative agreement with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations and experimental observations.

Abstract

In this work we investigate influence of substrate temperature on the surface morphology for substrate coverage below one monolayer. The model of film growth is based on random deposition enriched by limited surface diffusion. Also anisotropy in the growth is involved. We found from computer simulations for simple cubic lattice and solid-on-solid model, that the surface morphology changes with increasing temperature from isotropically distributed isolated small islands, through anisotropic 1-D stripes to larger 2-D anisotropic islands and again randomly distributed single atoms. The transition is also marked in height-height correlation function dependence on temperature, as directly seen by snapshots from simulations. The results are in good qualitative agreement with already published results of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, as well as with some experimental data.