A kinetic Monte Carlo simulation was used to investigate the 3-dimensional growth of Ge on Si(111) substrates when a monolayer of Pb atoms was pre-deposited as surfactant. Attention was focused on Ge diffusion around edge of clusters. Effects of Ge diffusing around cluster edge, maximum diffusion steps for edge-diffusion and number of nearest neighbors in 3D growth mode were considered. The coverage dependences of surface roughness were calculated and this showed that Ge edge-diffusion around clusters played an important role in the growth mode of 3D films.

3D Simulation of Ge Edge-Diffusion around Clusters in Ge/Pb/Si(111) Growth. L.Wu, F.Wu: Chinese Journal of Computational Physics, 2013, 30[3], 441-6