Systematic study on the influence of growth parameters on island density exponent, size distribution and scaling behaviour

Abstract

We present the Monte Carlo simulation of submonolayer film growth during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) at low temperature. We have made systematic study to see how the parameters diffusion to flux ratio (D/F), diffusional anisotropy (DA) and sticking anisotropy influences on island density exponent (χ), size distribution and scaling behaviour. We have found that, as diffusional anisotropy changes from DA = 1 to DA = ∝, the density exponent changes from χ = 0.34 ± 0.01 to 0.28 ± 0.01 for isotropic sticking case but when sticking is anisotropic the density exponent changes from χ = 0.31 ± 0.01 to 0.24 ± 0.01. The influence produced by DA on island size distribution is observed to depend on D/F ratio and sticking anisotropy. Depending on DA values and D/F ratio, the size distribution is also observed to be insensitive to the change in diffusional anisotropy. We also study the influence of diffusional anisotropy on scaling function for two sticking anisotropy condition. The scaling behaviour of island size distribution is observed to be not affected by all diffusional anisotropy as well as sticking anisotropy condition.