Noise-assisted Mound Coarsening in Epitaxial Growth

Abstract

We propose deposition noise to be an important factor in unstable epitaxial growth of thin films. Our analysis yields a geometrical relation H=(RWL)^2 between the typical mound height W, mound size L, and the film thickness H. Simulations of realistic systems show that the parameter R is a characteristic of the growth conditions, and generally lies in the range 0.2-0.7. The constancy of R in late-stage coarsening yields a scaling relation between the coarsening exponent 1/z and the mound height exponent \beta which, in the case of saturated mound slope, gives \beta = 1/z = 1/4.