Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of the wetting layer in Stranski–Krastanov heteroepitaxial growth

We present a new modification of the solid-on-solid heteroepitaxial KMC model combined with the ball and spring model allowing for efficient simulation of Stranski–Krastanov heteroepitaxial growth. The effects of intermixing are incorporated by means of a suitable prefactor to the elastic correction of the energy barrier describing the evolution of the effective misfit strain. This gives rise to a model with few parameters only which examines the surface morphology rather than the distribution of the individual elements. We support our predictions by simulations of the system InxGa1−xAs/GaAs (0 0 1) for constant temperature T = 800 K and deposition rate F = 1 ML/s. The results from simulations are in a good agreement with previous theoretical and experimental studies of heteroepitaxial systems in the literature.