Formation of various structures caused by particle size difference in colloidal heteroepitaxy

By performing isothermal–isochoric Monte Carlo simulations with depletion force, the author investigated the dependence of the epitxial layer structure on the differences in the particle size between the substrate in colloidal heteroepitaxy. By changing the size of epitaxial particles and performing simulations comprehensively, various structures including the structures observed in a experiment, such as a honeycomb, one created by hexagonal heptamers, and one consisting of both pentagonal tiles and triangular tiles, were created. When the ratio of particle sizes between the epitxial layer and substrate takes a specific value, two types of hexagonal structures were created. One is the hexagonal layer parallel to the substrate layer and the other layer is rotated by 60 \(^\circ \) ${}^{\circ }$ from the substrate layer. The former structure was created over a wide range of particle-size ratios, whereas the latter structure was created when the particle-size ratio was only around the specific ratio, and it seemed a metastable structure.