Two-stage mechanism of formation of ordered surface nanostructures under atomic deposition

Two-stage mechanism of formation of ordered surface nanostructures under atomic deposition is developed. At the first stage, the cooperative defect-deformational (DD) nucleation of seeding nanostructure occurs, described by the original deterministic DD Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (DDKS) equation for the concentration of mobile adatoms (surface defects). Periodic surface relief, formed at the nucleation stage, related to the surface defect deformation potential, serves as a self-organized mask for subsequent growth of nanostructures, described by the convential deterministic Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation for the relief height. Computer simulations of nonlinear DDKS and KPZ equations describe the two-stage formation, in dependence on the sign of the surface defect deformation potential, of disordered and hexagonally ordered ensembles of nanoparticles or honeycomb void nanostructures. The spatial DD harmonics interaction during cooperative nucleation is shown to play the key role in determination of the resulting nanostructures characteristics.