Island nucleation and growth with anomalous diffusion.

Abstract

While most studies of submonolayer island nucleation and growth have been based on the assumption of ordinary monomer diffusion corresponding to diffusion exponent μ=1, in some cases either subdiffusive (μ<1) or superdiffusive (μ>1) behavior may occur. Here we present general expressions for the exponents describing the flux dependence of the island and monomer densities as a function of the critical island size i, substrate dimension d, island fractal dimension d_{f}, and diffusion exponent μ, where 0≤μ≤2. Our results are compared with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for the case of irreversible island growth (i=1) with 0≤μ≤2 and d=2 as well as simulation results for d=1, 3, and 4, and excellent agreement is found.