Study of initial stages of thin film growth by means of atomistic computer simulation and image analysis

Abstract Nucleation and initial stages of three-dimensional film growth were studied by a computer experiment. The experiment consisted of two parts – preparation of simulated thin-film structures and computational analysis of their images. The simulated structures were generated by a model combining the molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo approaches. The analysis of the obtained structures was based on the ’Quadrat Counts’ method, which proved to be one of the most promising algorithms of image processing. The results obtained by image analysis of simulated thin films were discussed and the most suitable algorithms were suggested for the analysis of experimentally prepared films.