Mechanism of morphological transition in heteroepitaxial growth of metal films

We investigate the mechanisms of three-dimensional 3D to two-dimensional 2D morphological transition in the heteroepitaxial growth of metal films by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, and find that the difference between two types of neighbor interactions play an important role on the film morphology. The difference will vanishes with the film growing up. Just what the difference vanishes causes the morphological transition from 3D-cluster to 2D-island. Combined with elastic energy, we can predict which layer first occurs morphological transition. Our predicted results are consistent with the experiment reported by Su et al. Phys. Rev. B 71, 073304 2005 . © 2010 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3332479