| Abstract: | We study the equilibration of an initial surface of conic shape that consists of concentric circular monolayers by Kinetic
Monte Carlo (KMC) method. The kinetic processes of attachment and/or detachment of particles to/from steps, diffusion of particles
on the surface, along a step or cluster edges are considered. The difference between an up hill and down hill motion of a
particle at a step are taken into account through the Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barrier. The height of the cone evolves as h(0) − h(t) ~ t
1/α
where h(0) is the initial height of the surface and α is approximately 2. The ES barrier slows down the equilibration of the surface but the time dependence remains as given above.
The exponent α depends neither on ES barrier nor on the temperature. The equilibration is found also to be independent of energy barrier
to the motion of particles along the step edges. The number of particles in each layer except the top two circular layers
is found to decrease as t
0.57. |
