Modelling Pulsed Deposition of Nanoparticles into films

Abstract

We propose a numerical tool to mimic the pulsed deposition of nanoparticles, a technique used to fabricate thin films from the deposition of nanoparticles upon a substrate. We employ such tool under different initial conditions, in particular exploring the effect of depositing an heterogeneous/homogenenous sample of nanoparticles in terms of their morphology (size and shape). We monitor how changing the nature of the building block affects the porosity and roughness of the grown nanofilms. We found a strong dependence on the size of the nanoparticles, following, in the low size regime, a growth of the porosity following a power law.