Far-from-equilibrium Ag-Cu thin-films on Cu(100) and Ag(100) substrates

We study the dynamics of multilayer, heteroepitaxial deposition of mixed incoming fluxes of Ag and Cu atoms and the corresponding post-deposition relaxation on Ag (100) and Cu (100) substrates. To this end, we carried out extensive temperature accelerated dynamics (TAD) simulations at different substrate temperatures to characterize the morphology of the resulting films. Depending on the flux of impinging atoms, the number of layers, and the substrate temperature, the system can exhibit kinetically trapped, far-from-equilibrium configurations. Complex multi-adatom moves, not usually accounted for in regular Monte Carlo simulations, have a non-trivial relevance in the dynamics.