Steps roughening in thermal relaxation and low-coverage growth of sloped Pt(110) and Ir(110) surfaces: A numerical study

Abstract

The dynamical roughening of [001] steps on sloped Pt (110) and Ir (110) surfaces is investigated by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Our model includes deposition, diffusion and fully reversible aggregation on these surfaces with both anisotropic barriers and anisotropic attachment. The barriers for the diffusion processes have been calculated by means of classical molecular dynamics simulations where both metals are modeled by realistic many-body potentials. The roughness is evaluated through calculations of the step width in thermal relaxation of the surface and low-coverage growth conditions. Results indicated a non-trivial behavior of the width in time during relaxation. In growth, power-law behavior is recovered for both metal surfaces. Defects population on terraces is investigated through calculations of adatom and island densities. It is found that at very low temperature (T 1⁄4 200K for Pt and 400K for Ir and below), a power-law behavior with the growth time is got. Beyond, fluctuations in generated data become important and do not allow to correctly access the true trend of both quantities. Their behavior with the diffusion length at low temperature is singled out.