Simulation of island behavior in discontinuous film growth

The island behavior during discontinuous film formation was modeled by numerical simulation. Several experimentally found phenomena were simulated, namely dissolution of big islands, displacement of islands during growth in non-uniform diffusion field, coalescence and induced dissolution of islands. The results obtained show that the above phenomena can be in principle described in terms of a continuous model that simulates growth of islands in a non-uniform field of the adsorbed atoms. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.