Influence of Deposition Temperature and Rate on the Surface Morphology of Sc Thin Film

Abstract

The growth peculiarity of Sc thin film is simulated by a three-dimensional kinetic Monte Carlo method. The simulation results show that the surface root-mean-square roughness of Sc thin films is increased with the increasing of the deposition rate. The number of initial nucleus of Sc thin films is decreased gradually with the increasing of deposition temperature, and the size of the Sc grains gets larger with the increasing of the deposition temperature. The optimal deposition rate and deposition temperature of Sc thin film are predicted to be 10 ML/s or 3.308 nm/s, and 700 K, respectively.

Keywords:

• Monte Carlo
• simulation
• scandium
• thin film
• surface morphology

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (50871106 and u0837605) and the grant of Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry, CAEP; the Science Foundation of China Academy of Engineering Physics, China (Grant No. 2009A0301015 and 2010A0301011). Authors would like to thank Prof Dingquan Xiao for his valuable discussions.