On the morphological stability of two-dimensional epitaxial islands at high deposition rates

Abstract

The morphological stability of two-dimensional islands nucleated on a substrate during vacuum or vapour-phase atom deposition is investigated. Using simple scaling arguments, it is shown that, contrary to expectation, dendritic islands may be converted into compact ones by increasing the deposition rate, provided that the size of the critical nucleus is large enough. Implications for recent observations of Pt deposition on Pt(111) are discussed.