Impact of monomer evaporation on the statistics of island arrays formed inthin film deposition simulations

The statistics of island arrays formed in thin film deposition simulations with monomer evaporation are investigated. Island size distributions are fo und that depend on evaporation rate that also display scaling with substrat e coverage. Scaling behaviour in the extreme cases of no evaporation or ver y strong evaporation are explained in terms of capture zones and the Avrami model, respectively. The scaling in the intermediate cases can be understo od from a linear mixture of these two types of extreme. The monomer evapora tion also impacts on the spatial ordering of the island arrays. A measure o f disorder is introduced that changes monotonically with evaporation rate a nd coverage to distinguish the systems. In the case of strong evaporation t he islands are almost entirely at random positions on the substrate, wherea s at lower evaporation rates the islands become more correlated due to inho mogeneity in the time-averaged monomer density on the substrate. This behav iour is reflected in the structure factors for the various island arrays.