Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulation Of Deposition Of Co Thin Film Growth On Cu (001)

The GMR effect has become an international researching hotspot after the discovery of GMR effect of Fe/Cr multilayers. People found that multilayers formed by ferromagnetic metal of transition family and nonmagnetic metal or by alloy film and nonmagnetic metal will take on GMR effect. The value of GMR of Co/Cu multilayers is the biggest which can reach 65% under room temperature,GMR effect is also discoveried in guanular film, tunneling junction resistance and spin valve. The magnetic head developed by IBM company with GMR effect increase the disk memory density 17 times which can reach 5G b in2 in the sixth year since GMR effect was discovered. The memorizing density in lab now can reach 100G b in2 which keep it ahead in the competition with CD. GMR effect also can be applied in sensor and MRAM, so it brings broad attention. Both theoretical and experimental studies have indicated that the GMR properties are sensitive to nanoscale structural features of the films and the intrinsic properties of the material. But the relationship between the GMR property and the structural properties, including the interfacial roughness between multilayer and the surface roughness of the substrate, has not yet been fully understood.In this paper, the Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the structure of ultrathin film of Co on Cu (001) are presented. The many-body, tight-binding potential model is used in the simulation to represent the interatomic potential. We simulate the film morphology and the surface roughness of heteroepitaxial Co film on Cu (001) substrate under the transient and final state conditions with various incident energies. The Co covered area and the thickness of the film growth of the first two layers are investigated. The simulation results show that the interfacial and surface roughness strongly depends on the incident energy. There exits a transition energy where the interfacial roughness is a minimum. The final film morphology is related to the early growth mode. In addition, there are deviations from ideal layer-by-layer growth at coverage from 0-2 monolayers (ML). The results are in agreement with experimental results.