Premium
Nuleation and Growth of Thin Ag Films Vacuum‐deposited onto W
Author(s) -
Michailov E.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
crystal research and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.377
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1521-4079
pISSN - 0232-1300
DOI - 10.1002/crat.2170270512
Subject(s) - nucleation , supersaturation , coalescence (physics) , crystallite , ostwald ripening , surface diffusion , chemical physics , crystallography , cluster (spacecraft) , crystal growth , classical nucleation theory , chemistry , cluster size , kinetics , diffusion , materials science , thin film , thermodynamics , nanotechnology , molecular dynamics , adsorption , computational chemistry , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , astrobiology , computer science , programming language
An attempt to analyse the nucleation and growth phenomenon in a typical “Stranski‐Krastanov” (SK) growth system ‐ Ag/W (P AUNOV , M ICHAILOV 1979; M ICHAILOV ), in terms of island growth theory was made. Ag‐layers were analysed by the use of scanning electron‐and optical microscopes. A strong dependence of the nucleation kinetics on supersaturation and grain orientation was found to exist. On the basis of known rate equations, the number of atoms in the critical cluster i and the value of nucleation potential barrier E were estimated. The comparison between the experimentally obtained size‐, first nearest neighbour‐ and radial distributions and theory shows that: 1) nucleation and growth processes proceed through a surface diffusion of the atoms; 2) no coalescence between the crystallites and no crystal mobility exist.