Kinetic Roughening in Surface Growth

Abstract

AbstractIn nonequilibrium surface growth processes, such as molecular beam epitaxy and chemical vapor deposition, kinetic roughening plays a significant role in determining surface morphology. The stochastic dynamics in the processes induce novel scaling in surface roughness with respect to growth time and system sizes. We present here a series of numerical simulation studies of simple theoretical models, such as ballistic deposition model and biased solid-on-solid model, to demonstrate the dynamical scaling and phase transitions in a class of surface growth problems in the context of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang theory. Different dynamical processes, such as desorption and surface diffusion, are shown to have dramatic effects on the scaling and thus the surface structures.