Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of deposition of energetic copper atoms on a Cu(001) substrate

A three-dimensional (3D) energy-dependent kinetic Monte Carlo technique is developed to simulate thin film growth with deposition of energetic atoms. We incorporate the effects of the incident kinetic energy and the incident angle of atomic fluxes into the conventional vapour phase deposition model. The atom reflection, the biased diffusion and the athermal diffusion caused by the incident energy and the incident angle are included in our study. We simulate the film morphology and the surface roughness of homoepitaxial Cu films on a Cu(001) substrate with various incident energies and incident angles. The simulation results show that the energetic atoms can enhance the smoothness of the surface. This effect is very significant at a low substrate temperature or a high deposition rate. For a fixed incident energy, there exists a transition angle where the surface roughness is a minimum. In addition, the surface morphology of the Cu film in sputtering deposition is also studied and the approximate energy and angle distributions of the sputtered atoms are used. The results are in agreement with the experimental results.