Monte carlo simulation of binary alloy thin film growth

Abstract

Using the kinetic Monte Carlo method, we simulate binary alloy thin film (A0.5B0.5) growth on L×L substrate with focus on the domain growth behavior. The substrate temperature is fixed at 0.5J/kB, and ferromagnetic-like lateral effective binding energies (JAA, JBB, JAB) = (1., 1., 0.2)J are used. We vary diffusion-flux ratio D/F from 10 to several hundreds for different substrate sizes. Two kinds of methods are used to measure the domain size: first zero of order parameter correlation function and average domain area. Both methods find that domain size saturates much quicker than that in the antiferromagnetic-like interaction case; the former finds that saturated domain sizes increase with D/F linearly for D/F no larger than 300, and the later finds that they are equal for different system sizes and increase with D/F monotonically. Both methods have difficulty in dealing with D/F over 300 due to the finite size effects.