Steering effect on the shape of islands for homoepitaxial growth of Cu on Cu(001)

Abstract

The steering effect on the growth of islands is investigated by combining molecular dynamics (MD) and kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations. Dynamics of incident atoms and kinetics of atoms on a substrate are realized by MD and KMC, respectively. The reported experimental results on the asymmetric island growth [van Dijken , Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4038 (1999)] is well reproduced. A salient phenomenon, the reversal of the asymmetry, is found as the island size increases and attributed to the asymmetric flux on the lower terrace of islands.