Monte Carlo simulation of epitaxial growth in ultra-thin films

The epitaxial growth of ultra - thin films was simulated by Monte Carlo method. The effect of the interaction between particles was described using Morse potential. Three processes of particle deposition, adatom diffusion and adatom evaporation were taken into account in our model. The effects of the range of interparticle interaction alpha and the maximum steps that a particle was permitted to migrate on the morphology of ultra-thin films were investigated. The results show that under different alpha, the films' growth undergoes four stages: disperse, fractal, mixture of fractal and conglobating, and conglobating with the increase of particle's migrating steps. Especially, when alpha is 6, the disperse growth is hardly observed. In addition, the less the alpha and the less the particle's migrating steps, the more easily the particles tend to be in disperse growth.