SURFACE-ROUGHNESS OF THIN-FILMS

This paper describes statistical models of the formation of surface microrelief on thin films that grow by the island mechanism. The most important quantitative characteristics of the growth surface of the film (the autocorrelation function and the roughness spectrum and parameters) are derived on the basis of these models, and their relationship with the film-growth conditions is determined. It is shown that the theoretical models give a good description of the experimental data on the roughness of thin films.