Simulation of the submonolayer homoepitaxial clusters growth on Ag(110)

Abstract

The submonolayer growth of Ag/Ag(110) is studied by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations including deposition, diffusion, and fully reversible aggregation with both anisotropic diffusion barriers and anisotropic bond energies. The barriers for the elementary diffusion processes, including the Schwoebel barrier at step borders, are calculated by many-body tight-binding potentials. Depending on growth conditions (temperature T, adatom flux F, and coverage θ) the model shows morphology transitions to one-dimensional (1D) in-channel strips and then to 2D or 3D compact islands. At low T, the island density nI versus θ shows the nucleation, growth (at saturation density), and the coalescence regimes, whereas at higher T, at which point detachment from islands becomes effective, nI presents a maximum at very low θ, followed by a decrease, at first caused by island dissolution and then, for higher θ, by coalescence.