Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

We use computer simulation to study the layer-by-layer growth of particle structures in a lattice gas, taking the number of incorporated vacancies as a measure of the quality of the grown structure. A dynamic scaling relation describes the quality of structures in and out of equilibrium and reveals that the highest-quality structures are obtained, for fixed observation time, using strong interactions and far-from-equilibrium growth conditions. This result contrasts with the usual assumption that weak interactions and mild nonequilibrium conditions are the best way to minimize errors during assembly.