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Observed Effects of a Changing Step-Edge Density on Thin-Film Growth Dynamics

Aaron Fleet, Darren Dale, Y. Suzuki, J. D. Brock

cond-mat.mtrl-sciarXiv:cond-mat/0408704

Abstract

We grew SrTiO3 on SrTiO3 [001] by pulsed laser deposition, while observing x-ray diffraction at the (0 0 .5) position. The drop dI in the x-ray intensity following a laser pulse contains information about plume-surface interactions. Kinematic theory predicts dI/I = -4sigma(1-sigma), so that dI/I depends only on the amount of deposited material sigma. In contrast, we observed experimentally that |dI/I| < 4sigma(1-sigma), and that dI/I depends on the phase of x-ray growth oscillations. The combined results suggest a fast smoothing mechanism that depends on surface step-edge density.

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