TY - JOUR
T1 - Reentrant morphological instability of epitaxial islands
AU - Pimpinelli, Alberto
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1999
Y1 - 1999
N2 - The morphological stability of two-dimensional islands nucleated on a square-symmetry substrate during vacuum atom deposition is investigated by analytic scaling arguments and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that nonequilibrium, dendritic-skeletal island shapes may be converted into compact, equilibrium ones by increasing the deposition rate, in contrast with simple expectation. Our results imply that epitaxial islands generically should undergo a reentrant morphological transition with varying deposition rate. Stable, compact shapes should in principle exist only at intermediate values of the deposition rate.
AB - The morphological stability of two-dimensional islands nucleated on a square-symmetry substrate during vacuum atom deposition is investigated by analytic scaling arguments and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that nonequilibrium, dendritic-skeletal island shapes may be converted into compact, equilibrium ones by increasing the deposition rate, in contrast with simple expectation. Our results imply that epitaxial islands generically should undergo a reentrant morphological transition with varying deposition rate. Stable, compact shapes should in principle exist only at intermediate values of the deposition rate.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevB.60.17016
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.60.17016
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0009367611
SN - 1098-0121
VL - 60
SP - 17016
EP - 17022
JO - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
JF - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
IS - 24
ER -