AVS 47th International Symposium
    Surface Science Thursday Sessions
       Session SS3-ThM

Paper SS3-ThM11
Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Energetic Silicon Cluster Deposition on Graphite (0001)

Thursday, October 5, 2000, 11:40 am, Room 210

Session: Surface and Interface Structure II
Presenter: R. Neuendorf, The University of Birmingham, UK
Authors: R. Neuendorf, The University of Birmingham, UK
R.E. Palmer, The University of Birmingham, UK
R. Smith, Loughborough University, UK
Correspondent: Click to Email
Microcanonical Molecular Dynamics (MD) Simulations using classical interaction potentials@footnote 1@ have been employed to study the deposition of small Silicon clusters (3 to 55 atoms / cluster) onto a graphite (0001) surface. The clusters have been deposited with kinetic energies from 1 eV up to 100 eV per atom. We find that the deposition behaviour can be divided into four different regimes: i) wetting of the substrate for small clusters at low deposition energies leading to the creation of monolayer high isalnds ii) soft landing of larger clusters at low deposition energies iii) implantation of the clusters into the substrate at high deposition energies, leading to "hole drilling" as also found in the case of metal cluster deposition.@footnote 2@ iv) a regime of more complicated behaviour at intermediate deposition energies. @FootnoteText@@footnote 1@S. J. Carroll, S. G. Hall, R. E. Palmer and R. Smith, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81(17), 3715 (1998) @footnote 2@S. J. Carroll, P. D. Nellist, R. E. Palmer, S. Hobday and R. Smith, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84(12), 2654 (2000).