INFLUENCE OF STEP MOTION AND 2-DIMENSIONAL NUCLEATION ON RATE OF CRYSTAL GROWTH - SOME COMPUTER SIMULATED EXPERIMENTS

Tn order to investigate the influence of two-dimensional nucleation and step motion on the rate of crystal growth, the growth of a surface has been simulated with a digital computer. Two different models were employed. In the first, only a section of the surface was simulated and in the second a two-dimensional surface was simulated. Surfaces having fourfold and threefold symmetry were examined, both close-packed and vicinal. The results allow an estimate of the relative importance of random nucleation and step density on the growth rate, as a function of the rate of nucleation and step velocity. The effect of nucleation superimposed to growth from spirals arising from screw dislocations is also discussed. It is concluded that growth rate can be affected significantly by nucleation only for small misorientations and relatively large values of the free energy available for the crystallization process. © 1969.