Monte Carlo simulation of pulsed laser deposition

Abstract

Using the Monte Carlo method, we have studied the pulsed laser deposition process at the submonolayer regime. In our simulations, dissociation of an atom from a cluster is incorporated. Our results indicate that the pulsed laser deposition resembles molecular-beam epitaxy at very low intensity, and that it is characteristically different from molecular-beam epitaxy at higher intensity. We have also obtained the island size distributions. The scaling function for the island size distribution for pulsed laser deposition is different from that of molecular-beam epitaxy.