Temperature effects on the growth of the Co adsorbates on Pt vicinal surface

Abstract

Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations based on semi empirical description of Co-Pt interactions are developed to describe all the kinetic processes appearing on the Pt (997) vicinal surface and to highlight the temperature effect on the growth of the Co adsorbates. Depending on temperatures, three regimes are found. For law temperature, T≤50K, the nucleation regime is dominant, small islands are randomly dispersed on the Pt vicinal surface and the number of islands increases regularly. For the narrow temperature range [100, 150] K, the growth regime takes place, where the islands number stabilizes and the islands sizes increases. For high temperature, T≥200K, the coalescence regime is dominant. The number of islands decreases and the size of islands increases. We have also studied the site occupation at the step edge compared to the surface occupation as a function of the deposited adatoms in order to emphasize the step influence on the growth of Co on Pt (997) for different temperatures.