Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1685570 | Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms | 2007 | 6 Pages |
Layer-by-layer growth of thin films can be promoted by using low energy ion deposition (LEID) techniques. The basic process affecting the growth are often quite diverse, but often the ion impact induced inter layer mass transfer processes due to adatom insertion to lower step edges or pile-ups to step edges above dominate. In this paper we propose a simple phenomenological model which describes the growth of thin films in LEID under these conditions. The model makes possible to distinguish the dominant growth, the detection of the transition from the 3D growth to 2D growth, and it can be used to quantify the degree of layer-by-layer growth. The model contains only two parameters, which can be phenomenologically related to the properties of the bombarding ion beam.