The early stage of deposition process for Fe–Cu magnetic multilayer systems: molecular dynamics simulation

Abstract

The deposition behaviour for a Fe–Cu magnetic multilayer system in an early stage of the deposition process was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Specifically, the steering effect was quantitatively investigated through extensive measurements of the trajectory, deposition flux and force of atoms near the artificially structured Fe or Cu step positioned on the Cu(0 0 1) or Fe(0 0 1) surface. Near the step edges of the planar structure at a low incident energy of 0.1 eV, the steering effect for the case of Fe/Cu(0 0 1) was observed more significantly than for Cu/Fe(0 0 1). Additionally, the mechanism of down-diffusion from the step was discussed and the corresponding energetic was calculated using the molecular statics method.