Effects of deposition dynamics on epitaxial growth

Abstract

The dynamic effects, such as the steering and the screening effects during deposition, on an epitaxial growth (Cu/Cu(001)), is studied by kinetic Monte Carlo simulation that incorporates molecular dynamic simulation to rigorously take the interaction of the deposited atom with the substrate atoms into account. We find three characteristic features of the surface morphology developed by grazing angle deposition: (1) enhanced surface roughness, (2) asymmetric mound, and (3) asymmetric slopes of mound sides. Regarding their dependence on both deposition angle and substrate temperature, a reasonable agreement of the simulated results with the previous experimental ones is found. The characteristic growth features by grazing angle deposition are mainly caused by the inhomogeneous deposition flux due to the steering and screening effects, where the steering effects play the major role rather than the screening effects. Newly observed in the present simulation is that the side of mound in each direction is composed of various facets instead of all being in one selected mound angle even if the slope selection is attained, and that the slope selection does not necessarily mean the facet selection.

Experimental, theoretical and numerical simulation-based investigations on the fabricated Cu2ZnSn thin-film-based Schottky diodes with enhanced electron transport for solar cell

“…We observed the screening effect, which plays a vital role in a DLA as verified by simulations 28 . Two-dimensional sketch schematic diagrams are shown in Figure 3 a, b, respectively.…”

Effects of shadowing and steering in oblique-incidence metal (100) epitaxial growth

“…[33][34][35]38 The resulting fast edge diffusion enhances the mound instability at normal incidence 5 and also enhances the regularity and ordering of the resulting islands and ripples. 17,18,22 In summary, we have carried out extensive simulations of a model of oblique-incidence metal ͑100͒ growth in order to understand the effects of steering and flux-focusing due to attraction as well as shadowing on the surface morphology. We have also studied the dependence of the surface morphology on a variety of deposition parameters including the azimuthal angle, growth temperature, and flux, as well as deposition angle and film thickness.…”

“…However, because of the extremely time-consuming nature of these simulations, only very recently has it become possible to extend these simulations to multilayer growth. 17,18 Recently, we have used a simplified model with ballistic deposition 19 in order to show that many of the qualitative and semiquantitative features observed in high-angle obliqueincidence Cu/Cu͑100͒ growth by van Dijken et al 7,8 can be explained by geometrical ͑shadowing͒ effects. Our results also indicated that the formation of ͑111͒ facets is crucial to the formation of ripple structures at large angles of incidence.…”

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

“…There has been much interest in understanding the detailed mechanisms controlling surface morphology in epitaxial growth in order to optimize device performance [1,2]. It is generally known that the incoming process of energetic depositing atoms and the accompanying surface diffusion are important steps to determine the morphology of the films grown on the surface [3,4].…”