Development of microstructure in nanostructures and thin films

We have created a finite-element based, multiple-material, levelset-based code to implicitly represent and track evolving islands and grains. With this method, the code can track island growth in three dimensions through nucleation to coalescence into a grain structure. We discuss the numerical methods, capabilities, and limitations of the code, and then examine the microstructures that result from different models of growth based on starting structures derived from atomistic Monte Carlo simulations. We show simulation results from a kinetically limited process (electroless deposition), a transport-limited process (physical vapor deposition), and a process neither transport nor kinetically limited (physical vapor deposition with orientation dependent sticking factors).

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