Abstract
Different patterns can be created on the surface of growing crystals, among which the step bunches and/or step meanders are two of the most studied. The Ehrlich–Schwoebel effect at the surface steps is considered one of the “usual suspects” of such patterning. A direct step barrier is when it is easier to attach a particle to the step from the lower terrace than from the upper terrace. Thus, during the process of crystal growth leads to the formation of meanders, while an inverse barrier leads to step bunching. Based on our vicinal Cellular Automaton model, but this time in (2 + 1)D, we show that the combination of a direct and inverse step barrier and the proper selection of the potential of the well between them leads to the formation of bunched step structures. Following this is the formation of anti-bands. In addition, changing the height of the direct step barrier leads to the growth of nanocolumns, nanowires, and nanopyramids or meanders, in the same system.
Highlights
Two different types of Ehrlich–Schwoebel (ES) effects are discussed: the direct step barrier that is on top of the step, and the inverse step barrier that is present below the step and prevents particles from
Our vicinal Cellular Automaton model (vicCA) model consists of two essentially different modules: the Cellular Automaton (CA) one responsible for the evolution of the vicinal crystal surface realizing the growth events at once according to pre-defined rule(s), and the Monte Carlo (MC) one representing the diffusion of the adatoms and realized in a serial mode, adatom by adatom chosen in random
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Summary
The tremendous development in the field of nanotechnology has been made possible by significant advances in experimental techniques. Our vicCA model consists of two essentially different modules: the Cellular Automaton (CA) one responsible for the evolution of the vicinal crystal surface realizing the growth events at once according to pre-defined rule(s), and the Monte Carlo (MC) one representing the diffusion of the adatoms and realized in a serial mode, adatom by adatom chosen in random. One CA unit followed by one MC unit and the completion of the surface particles to their initial concentration c0 represents one-time step of a simulation. We add one more rule—we “correct” voids of one site automatically, which means that if a4single of 10 site is surrounded by steps from each side, it is filled irrespectively if there is an adatom there or not Defined once, these rules do not change during all simulations, and their results are shown below.
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