Dynamical simulation of molecular-beam epitaxial growth of a model crystal

Molecular-dynamics simulation is used to study molecular-beam epitaxial growth of a model fcc system where the atoms interact via the Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential. Dependence of the growth profile on the substrate temperature, the rate of the incident atomic flux, annealing, and on the orientation of the crystal surface is examined. Roles of various kinetic processes in epitaxial growth properties are discussed. We find that for a LJ system the best epitaxial growth occurs at low to intermediate temperatures along the [111] and [100] directions.