Multiscale modeling of structure formation of C₆₀ on insulating CaF₂ substrates

Morphologies of adsorbed molecular films are of interest in a wide range of applications. To study the epitaxial growth of these systems in computer simulations requires access to long time and length scales, and one typically resorts to kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations. However, KMC simulations require as input transition rates and their dependence on external parameters (such as temperature). Experimental data allow only limited and indirect access to these rates, and models are often oversimplified. Here, we follow a bottom-up approach and aim at systematically constructing all relevant rates for an example system that has shown interesting properties in experiments, buckminsterfullerene on a calcium fluoride substrate. We develop classical force fields (both atomistic and coarse-grained) and perform molecular dynamics simulations of the elementary transitions in order to derive explicit expressions for the transition rates with a minimal number of free parameters.