Morphological analysis of discontinuous thin films on various substrates

Abstract

We study and characterize the morphology of granular gold films deposited on amorphous and polycrystalline substrates using some of the more efficient tools of the mathematical morphology. This analysis shows the occurrence of characteristic lengths in the morphology which are strongly dependent on the nature of the substrate. This implies that a completely random model such as the theory of percolation can only be considered as a first approximation to interpret the dielectric and optical properties of granular thin films.