Eur. Phys. J. B 11, 497-504 (1999)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050961

Kinetics of shape equilibration for two dimensional islands

¹ Département de Physique des Matériaux (UMR CNRS 5586) , Université Claude Bernard Lyon-1, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France
² Instituto de Física, Lab. de Cuernavaca, Apdo. Postal 48-3, C.P. 62251, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
³ Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique (UMR CNRS 5588) , Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble-1, B.P. 87, 38402 Saint-Martin-d'Hères Cedex, France
⁴ LASMEA, Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-2, Les Cézeaux, 63177 Aubière Cedex, France

Received: 7 December 1998
Revised: 18 March 1999
Published online: 15 October 1999

Abstract

We study the relaxation to equilibrium of two dimensional islands containing up to 20 000 atoms by Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the commonly assumed relaxation mechanism - curvature-driven relaxation via atom diffusion - cannot explain the results obtained at low temperatures, where the island edges consist in large facets. Specifically, our simulations show that the exponent characterizing the dependence of the equilibration time on the island size is different at high and low temperatures, in contradiction with the above cited assumptions. Instead, we propose that - at low temperatures - the relaxation is limited by the nucleation of new atomic rows on the large facets: this allows us to explain both the activation energy and the island size dependence of the equilibration time.