We investigate the formation of extended defects during molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations of GaN and InGaN growth on (0001) and ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) wurtzite-GaN surfaces. The simulated growths are conducted on an atypically large scale by sequentially injecting nearly a million individual vapor-phase atoms towards a fixed GaN surface; we apply time-and-position-dependent boundary constraints that vary the ensemble treatments of the vapor-phase, the near-surface solid-phase, and the bulk-like regions of the growing layer. The simulations employ newly optimized Stillinger-Weber In-Ga-N-system potentials, wherein multiple binary and ternary structures are included in the underlying density-functional-theory training sets, allowing improved treatment of In-Ga-related atomic interactions. To examine the effect of growth conditions, we study a matrix of >30 different MD-growth simulations for a range of InxGa1-xN-alloy compositions (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.4) and homologous growth temperatures [0.50 ≤ T/T*m(x) ≤ 0.90], where T*m(x) is the simulated melting point. Growths conducted on polar (0001) GaN substrates exhibit the formation of various extended defects including stacking faults/polymorphism, associated domain boundaries, surface roughness, dislocations, and voids. In contrast, selected growths conducted on semi-polar ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) GaN, where the wurtzite-phase stacking sequence is revealed at the surface, exhibit the formation of far fewer stacking faults. We discuss variations in the defect formation with the MD growth conditions, and we compare the resulting simulated films to existing experimental observations in InGaN/GaN. While the palette of defects observed by MD closely resembles those observed in the past experiments, further work is needed to achieve truly predictive large-scale simulations of InGaN/GaN crystal growth using MD methodologies.
Gruber, Jacob G.; Lim, Hojun; Abdeljawad, Fadi; Foiles, Stephen; Tucker, Garritt J.
A method for the generation of atomistic realizations of polycrystalline aggregates from a phase field grain growth model is presented. Topologies of computational microstructures constructed from the proposed method as well as conventional Poisson Voronoi tessellation are quantitatively compared. While little difference is exhibited in the macroscale mechanical response, substantial differences in the resolved contribution to strain of deformation mechanisms of the structures under uniaxial tension are uncovered using post-processing kinematic metrics. These differences in the fundamental strain accommodation processes suggest that grain topology and grain boundary character significantly affect local responses of polycrystals in molecular dynamics simulations and that significant attention should be paid to the chosen starting microstructure.
In atomistic simulations, diffusion energy barriers are usually calculated for each atomic jump path using a nudged elastic band method. Practical materials often involve thousands of distinct atomic jump paths that are not known a priori. Hence, it is often preferred to determine an overall diffusion energy barrier and an overall pre-exponential factor from the Arrhenius equation constructed through molecular dynamics simulations of mean square displacement of the diffusion species at different temperatures. This approach has been well established for interstitial diffusion, but not for substitutional diffusion at the same confidence. Using In0.1Ga0.9N as an example, we have identified conditions where molecular dynamics simulations can be used to calculate highly converged Arrhenius plots for substitutional alloys. This may enable many complex diffusion problems to be easily and reliably studied in the future using molecular dynamics, provided that moderate computing resources are available.