RESUMEN
The final structure and properties of layers grown by epitaxy techniques are determined in the very early stage of the process. This review describes one-dimensional models for epitaxial growth, emphasizing the basic theoretical concepts employed to analyze nucleation and aggregation phenomena in the submonolayer regime. The main findings regarding the evolution of quantities that define the properties of the system, such as monomer and island densities, and the associated island size, gap length, and capture zone distributions are discussed, as well as the analytical tools used to evaluate them. This review provides a concise overview of the most widely used algorithms for simulating growth processes, discusses relevant experimental results, and establishes connections with existing theoretical studies.
RESUMEN
Through a one-dimensional colloidal model for epitaxial growth, we characterize the nucleation and aggregation processes occurring in a gap between adjacent islands. The timescales associated with deposition, diffusion, aggregation, and nucleation inside the gap are studied in terms of the parameters defining the interaction between colloidal particles. Numerical results from molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations are compared with analytical models and good agreement is found between both data sets. The results for the timescales are used to calculate the associated rates to generate kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations, which allow exploring larger systems and longer timescales in comparison with MD simulations. The KMC simulations reproduce the global behavior of the densities of islands and monomers as well as the gap length distribution between adjacent islands.