A new approach to simulate the morphology of thin films.

Abstract

We propose a new kinetic growth model to describe the condensation process of thin metallic films. The model is based on attractive short-range interactions between condensedatoms and takes into account all possible growth processes considered earlier in the so-called rateequation approach. The consequences of the model are simply worked out by Monte Carlosimulations. We show that the morphologies of the films generated by the simulations are inexcellent agreement with experimentally grown gold films, demonstrating the reliability of themodel. © 1993 IOP Publishing Ltd.