Surface characteristics of epitaxially grown Ni layers on Al surfaces: Molecular dynamics simulation

Abstract

The deposition behavior for Ni thin film growth on Al substrates of various orientations according to the incident energy of adatoms was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. In spite of the low adatom incident energy of 0.1 eV, Ni-Al intermixing occurred actively at the surfaces of Al(001), Al(011), and Al(111) at 80 K and Ni atoms apparently favored the island growth mode irrespective of the Al surface orientation. The highest surface roughness was shown for the case of Al(111) surface. The steering effect, which results in rougher surface, was significantly observed at low incident energy. The steering effect was quantitatively investigated through the extensive measurement of the trajectory and deposition flux of atoms with the variation of incident energy near the artificially structured Ni step positioned on Al surfaces.