| Abstract [eng] |
This work focusses on the spatial and dynamical properties of surfaces obtained from the continuum model for amorphous thin film growth. it is shown that their morphologies consist of disordered cellular or mound-like patterns possessing a characteristic length, on the small scales, and slow self-affine height variations – on large scales. the characteristic length of the small-scale mound-like patterns caused by the linear instability in the gks model depends on the single parameter of the model, but the mounds retain statistically similar geometrical form for a range of parameter values. slow height variations have a self-affine character that is indicated by the power-law shape of the spatial spectrum (structure factor) for small wave numbers. it is demonstrated how three qualitatively different finite-size scaling relations for the global surface roughness, two of which are found in the gks model, follow from this power-law. by analysing the kinetics of the global roughness in the saturated regime for varying system sizes, the relations between spatial and temporal scales of the slow height variations are determined. large parameter values result in non-stationary kinetics and the occurrence of local coarsening structures previously unobserved in continuum surface growth models. |
