Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulation of Deposition of Co Thin Film on Cu(001)

Abstract

A kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulation is conducted to study the growth of ultrathin film of Co on Cu(001) surface. The many-body, tight-binding potential model is used in the simulation to represent the interatomic potential. The film morphology of heteroepitaxial Co film on a Cu(001) substrate at the transient and final state conditions with various incident energies is simulated. The Co covered area and the thickness of the film growth of the first two layers are investigated. The simulation results show that the incident energy influences the film growth and structure. There exists a transition energy where the interfacial roughness is minimum. There are some void regions in the film in the final state, because of the influence of the island growth in the first few layers. In addition, there are deviations from ideal layer-by-layer growth at a coverage from 0 ∼ 2 monolayers (ML).