Diffusion, Nucleation and Growth on Metal Surfaces

Controlled Self-Assembly of Nanocrystalline Arrays Studied by 3D Kinetic Monte Carlo Modeling

“…As one could expect, the islands nucleate spontaneously at the surface and their size increases with time. At some point, the islands start merging while retaining the pyramidal surface morphology, similarly to the experimentally observed behavior; ,, see also Figure . At room temperature, the growth occurs mainly because of arrival of deposited atoms, as well as by the merging of neighbor islands (coalescence).…”

“…The major processes of PVD nanocrystalline synthesis, the nucleation and growth of nanocrystalline islands on a substrate, have been extensively addressed in the literature. − Figure illustrates the growth of Cu islands on a crystalline Cu substrate during a PVD process. , Figure a shows an early postnucleation stage when tiny metallic islands have just arisen, and Figure b,c demonstrates how the morphology evolves. It can be seen that multilayer structures arise even before the first monolayer is complete and some of the new nucleation events take place on top of previously deposited layers.…”

“…STM images (a–c) of Cu on Cu(001) for a size of 100 × 100 nm at T = 296 K with coverage θ, (a) 0.08 and (b) 1.0 ML at R = 0.16 ML/s and (c) 8 ML at R = 0.2 ML/s, obtained by physical vapor deposition . The STM images (d–f) of Cu on Cu(100) at R = 0.0208 ML/s and T = 299 K produced by physical vapor deposition.…”