Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of nucleation on patterned substrates

The effects of a patterned substrate on island nucleation are investigated using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Two different models are formulated by incorporating an inhomogeneous energy surface into the basic solid-on-solid model of epitaxial growth to describe surface diffusion and consequent island nucleation on a patterned substrate. These models are related to two examples of real systems in which preferential nucleation at specific sites is encountered. Growth on a patterned substrate produces quite uniformly sized islands, which are are found to order into regular arrays displaying the periodicity of the underlying substrate. Confinement due to the patterned substrate is observed to be strongly dependent on the growth conditions. We demonstrate that there exists an optimal set of growth conditions determined by the length scale of the substrate pattern. In addition, the influence of the patterned substrate on the process of Ostwald ripening is discussed.