Interplay of orientational order and roughness in simulated thin film growth of anisotropically interacting particles

Roughness and orientational order in thin films of anisotropic particles are investigated using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations on a cubic lattice. Anisotropic next-neighbor interactions between the lattice particles were chosen to mimic the effects of shape anisotropy in the interactions of disk- or rodlike molecules with van der Waals attractions. Increasing anisotropy leads first to a preferred orientation in the film (which is close to the corresponding equilibrium transition) while the qualitative mode of roughness evolution (known from isotropic systems) does not change. At strong anisotropies, an effective step-edge (Ehrlich-Schwoebel) barrier appears and a nonequilibrium roughening effect is found, accompanied by reordering in the film which can be interpreted as the nucleation and growth of domains of lying-down disks or rods. The information on order and roughness is combined into a diagram of dynamic growth modes.

Erratum: Lattice gas study of thin-film growth scenarios and transitions between them: Role of substrate [Phys. Rev. E 103, 023302 (2021)]

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.103.023302.

Lattice gas study of thin-film growth scenarios and transitions between them: Role of substrate

Thin-film growth is investigated in two types of lattice gas models where substrate and film particles are different, expressed by unequal interaction energy parameters. The first is of solid-on-solid type, whereas the second additionally incorporates desorption, diffusion in the gas phase above the film and readsorption at the film (appropriate for growth in colloidal systems). In both models, the difference between particle-substrate and particle-particle interactions plays a central role for the evolution of the film morphology at intermediate times. The models exhibit a dynamic layering transition which occurs at generally lower substrate attraction strengths than the equilibrium layering transition. A second, flattening transition is found where initial island growth transforms to layer-by-layer growth at intermediate deposition times. Combined with the known roughening behavior in such models for very large deposition times, we present four global growth scenarios, charting out the possible types of roughness evolution.