Static substrate deposition: Toward longer time scale deposition simulations

Abstract

We report on the development of a new method for simulating the deposition of atoms onto surfaces, which allows for longer time scales and/or larger system sizes. The method involves simulating only the deposited material on a purely static substrate and corrects for the missing thermal fluctuations and energy exchange effects that surface atoms experience as a result of a static substrate. This method may be viewed as an intermediate approximation between the discrete kinetic Monte Carlo and the full molecular dynamics (MD) methods, because it retains the full trajectory dynamics for the deposited atoms. The method can achieve speed-up times of approximately two orders of magnitude for submonolayer depositions on large simulation substrates. We first apply the method to an ideal prototypical system involving the deposition of Pt material on Pt substrates with two-dimensional Ag monolayer substrate patterns, where we show that it produces nanostructures and small cluster diffusion behavior almost identical to that observed during full MD simulations. As an ideal second application of the method, we use it to deposit Pt and Au onto a reconstructed Au(111) surface representative of a herringbone reconstruction and comment on the findings. Finally, we comment on the limitations and possible future improvements.