Stencil growth of metallic nanorod: An atomistic simulation

The stencil growth of nanoscale patterns using molecular dynamics simulation has been demonstrated. A comparison has been made to a film grown by identical conditions without the stencil. It is shown that in the case of nanoscale proximity between mask and substrate, patterns of the same dimension as the mask can be obtained. The results also indicate that the obtained nanorod presents a higher surface area than the corresponding thin film. It is demonstrated that nanorod surface roughness decreases by merging adjacent surface irregularity during the deposition.