Monte Carlo simulation of polycrystalline thin film deposition - art. no. 035406

A Monte Carlo program for the simulation of the growth of two-dimensional p olycrystalline films onto amorphous substrates is proposed. The coordinate of the atoms are quasicontinuous, allowing islands with different orientati ons to be included in the same sample. Enhanced diffusion along grain bound aries does not need to be modeled ad hoc since, in our model, it is a simpl e geometrical consequence of grain misorientation. Adsorption sites are par tly fixed and partly dynamically generated at run time. The energy barriers are calculated taking into account the environment of the diffusing atoms. Island and grain size distributions estimated over samples obtained with s imulated depositions performed at various substrate temperature are reporte d. The effect of the substrate temperature on the average grain size in fil ms with coverages from 0.2 to 1 have been simulated and compared with the e xperimental data available in the literature.