Scanning Surface Roughness of Growing Nanoisland Thin Films as a Dependence on Substrate Temperature and Deposition Flux

Abstract

Experimentally observed non-monotonous dependencies of surface roughness of the growing thin films on substrate temperature and deposition flux of particles are analyzed by kinetic model based on rate equations. Obtained modeling results show good quantitative agreement with the experimental curves and explain so unusual phenomenon of surface roughness. It is shown that non-monotonous dependence of surface roughness on the temperature and deposition flux is determined by the size of islands and diffusivity of atoms on the surface. From the presented analysis follows that the formation mechanisms of non-monotonous dependencies of the surface roughness on the temperature and the deposition flux are different. These mechanisms are qualitatively analyzed in the present paper.