AVS 50th International Symposium
    Surface Science Tuesday Sessions
       Session SS2-TuM

Paper SS2-TuM5
Geometry-Based Simulation Algorithm for Island Formation during Submonolayer Film Growth

Tuesday, November 4, 2003, 9:40 am, Room 328

Session: Nucleation and Growth
Presenter: J.W. Evans, Iowa State University
Authors: J.W. Evans, Iowa State University
M.C. Bartelt, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
M. Li, Iowa State University
Correspondent: Click to Email
A current challenge is to develop efficient new coarse-grained simulation strategies which reliably predict the morphology of growing films. We present a geometry-based simulation (GBS) algorithm which avoids explicit treatment of the terrace diffusion of adatoms and their aggregation with islands - a computationally expensive component of either atomistic KMC simulation or continuum formulations. GBS characterizes island growth in terms of capture zones (CZ's), and implements simple but realistic geometric rules to incorporate crucial spatial aspects of the island nucleation process, i.e., nucleation nearby CZ boundaries. This approach reliably predicts island size distributions and spatial correlations, and is especially efficient for highly reversible island formation.