Reentrant morphological instability of epitaxial islands

Alberto Pimpinelli

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    12 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    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.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)17016-17022
    Number of pages7
    JournalPhysical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
    Volume60
    Issue number24
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 1999

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
    • Condensed Matter Physics

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