Damping of Growth Oscillations

Abstract

Computer simulations and scaling theory are used to investigate the damping of oscillations during epitaxial growth on high-symmetry surfaces. The crossover from smooth to rough growth takes place after the deposition of (D/F)^δmonolayers, where D and F are the surface diffusion constant and the deposition rate, respectively, and the exponent δ=2/3 on a two-dimensional surface. At the transition, layer-by-layer growth becomes desynchronized on distances larger than a layer coherence length proportional l^2, where l is a typical distance between two-dimensional islands in the submonolayer region of growth.

to appear in The European Physical Journal B/Surfaces and Interfaces (5 pages, 4 figures)