Level set approach to reversible epitaxial growth.
We generalize the level set approach to model epitaxial growth to include thermal detachment of atoms from island edges. This means that islands do not always grow and island dissociation can occur. We make no assumptions about a critical nucleus. Excellent quantitative agreement is obtained with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for island densities and island size distributions in the submonolayer regime.
Petersen
M
M
School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
Ratsch
C
C
Caflisch
R E
RE
Zangwill
A
A