2010 Volume 8 Pages 65-68
We present theoretical study comparing kinetics, and the time evolution of surface features for two modes of epitaxial growth — pulsed deposition with a given repetition rate (PLD mode), and continuous growth with a constant flux (MBE mode). We confine ourselves to the sub—monolayer regime. We study island morphology and analyze island density as a function of the substrate temperature and the coverage. We show that the behavior of the island density as a function of the temperature in both cases is quite different. The island densities in the PLD mode are substantially higher than in the MBE mode, provided the temperature is sufficiently high. In the case of PLD, we observe anomalous temperature dependence of the island density in a certain temperature interval. We analyzed the temperature dependence of concentration of small island, and we found that anomalous behavior is related to a persistence of small surface clusters during PLD growth. Anomaly is not present in MBE growth, because the concentration of small islands in this mode of growth is very low. The problem is studied by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations employing the full diffusion solid-on-solid model with specific material parameters based on a recent experiment. [DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2010.65]
