https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-70283-5
Regular Article
Molecular dynamics for irradiation driven chemistry: application to the FEBID process*
1 MBN Research Center, Altenhöferallee
3, 60438
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2 University of Southern Denmark
(SDU), Campusvej 55,
5230, Odense M,
Denmark
a e-mail: ilia@sdu.dk
b On leave from A.F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute Russian Academy of
Sciences, Polytekhnicheskaya st. 26, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
Received:
20
April
2016
Received in final form:
6
July
2016
Published online:
20
October
2016
A new molecular dynamics (MD) approach for computer simulations of irradiation driven chemical transformations of complex molecular systems is suggested. The approach is based on the fact that irradiation induced quantum transformations can often be treated as random, fast and local processes involving small molecules or molecular fragments. We advocate that the quantum transformations, such as molecular bond breaks, creation and annihilation of dangling bonds, electronic charge redistributions, changes in molecular topologies, etc., could be incorporated locally into the molecular force fields that describe the classical MD of complex molecular systems under irradiation. The proposed irradiation driven molecular dynamics (IDMD) methodology is designed for the molecular level description of the irradiation driven chemistry. The IDMD approach is implemented into the MBN Explorer software package capable to operate with a large library of classical potentials, many-body force fields and their combinations. IDMD opens a broad range of possibilities for modelling of irradiation driven modifications and chemistry of complex molecular systems ranging from radiotherapy cancer treatments to the modern technologies such as focused electron beam deposition (FEBID). As an example, the new methodology is applied for studying the irradiation driven chemistry caused by FEBID of tungsten hexacarbonyl W(CO)6 precursor molecules on a hydroxylated SiO2 surface. It is demonstrated that knowing the interaction parameters for the fragments of the molecular system arising in the course of irradiation one can reproduce reasonably well experimental observations and make predictions about the morphology and molecular composition of nanostructures that emerge on the surface during the FEBID process.
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2016