EXPERIMENTS IN A PERFECT WORLD - COMPUTER-SIMULATIONS OF GROWTH

We present two examples of computer simulations which can give unique information on the growth mechanisms of nanostructures and thin films. First, the morphologies and the island size distributions in the usua l epitaxial growth models are studied. This information cannot be obta ined from simple analytical approaches such as mean-field calculations or scaling analysis. Second, we analyze a new model which includes mo nomer evaporation and we show that computer simulations can help decid ing between different mean-field analysis and lead to the correct grow th exponents.