Fast kinetic Monte Carlo simulation and statistics of quantum dot arrays

The paper introduces a new three-dimensional heteroepitaxial kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) model for fast simulation of self-assembled quantum dot (QD) arrays. It represents a computationally efficient simplification of the ball-and-spring model and captures the most important features of heteroepitaxial growth. This conclusion is supported by our results obtained from KMC simulations of InAs QDs grown on GaAs(001) substrate at the following technologically relevant conditions: temperature in the range T = 700–800 K, deposition rate F = 0.1–1.6 ML/s, and a set of energy barriers derived from the literature. The main characteristics of QDs such as uniformity in size, aspect ratio, spatial ordering and others, are studied as functions of the most important parameters describing the growth process — substrate temperature, deposition rate and surface coverage.