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

A method of computer experiment was used for a study of nucleation and initial stages of three-dimensional film growth. In the first part of the experiment, the simulated structures with given parameters were generated by a model combining the molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo approaches. In the second part, the acquired structures were analysed by means of morphological methods. The ‘Quadrat Counts’ method and Voronoi tessellation were used and compared. The influence of individual modelled parameters such as deposition rate, contact angle and condensation coefficient was studied and discussed. The used morphological methods were also applied on the TEM images of indium films in order to compare the obtained results.