Effects of Substrate Strain on Epitaxial Growth by Kinetic Monte Carlo Method
Daisuke MATSUNAKA, Yoshiharu DOI and Yoji SHIBUTANI
Abstract:Effects of substrate strain on epitaxial growth are studied, using the kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) method. The strain dependences of the activation energy barrier and the attempt frequency are considered. The homo-epitaxial growth on Ag (111) surface with uniform tensile strain is simulated, and influences of substrate strain on the nucleation of island and the morphology are investigated. On the tensile-strained surface, the island density increases due to the suppression of the adatom diffusion on terrace. The averaged coordination number of atom constituting of islands decreases and the shape of island is less compact. The growth behavior on the strained substrate is same as at lower temperature. Key Words:Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation, Epitaxial Growth, Strain, Nucleation, Island density