Mechanism of Co nanocluster burrowing on Cu(100)

Abstract

Using a classical molecular dynamics method we have studied the burrowing mechanism of Co nanoclusters on a Cu substrate. We found that there are primarily two different mechanisms for the burrowing, depending on the configuration of the cluster after thermal deposition. Deposited clusters with an epitaxial configuration will burrow through vacancy migration along the Co-Cu interface, and nonaligned clusters burrow through disordered motion of atoms. The realignment of the nonaligned clusters was found to be due to a collective rotational movement of the whole cluster during the burrowing process. We discuss these results and perform a comparison with experimental and previously simulated results.