Step-edge induced area selective growth: a kinetic Monte Carlo study

Abstract

Template directed growth of functional organic molecules is a recently developed technique to generate organic micro/nano-structures on surfaces. Using templates of a metal patterned substrate, two different mechanisms were observed: area selective nucleation on predefined patterns with molecules nucleated on top of patterns and step-edge induced area selective growth on the substrate. Until now, much work has been done to investigate the microscopic mechanism of the former one. However, little attention was paid to the latter one. Here in this work, a series of kinetic lattice Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to get deeper insight into the microscopic mechanism of step-edge induced area selective growth. The time-resolved process of structure formation, the relationship between nucleation control efficiency and template size, and different growth regimes were studied. The results agree well with experimental speculation while selecting appropriate interactions.