2003/09/16 by TC Kim, T. C. Kim, Cheol-Min Ghim +17 · 67 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Geometry #Integrated Circuits and Semiconductor Failure Analysis #Ion #Ion-surface interactions and analysis #Kinetic energy #Materials science #Nabla symbol #Omega #Order (exchange) #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scaling #Scaling law #Scanning tunneling microscope #Sputtering #Surface (topology) #Surface finish #Thin film #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.246104
published in Physical Review Letters 92(24), 246104 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2003/09/16 · openalex publication_date 2004/06/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the kinetic roughening of Ar+ ion-sputtered Pd(001) surface both experimentally and theoretically. In situ real-time x-ray reflectivity and in situ scanning tunneling microscopy show that nanoscale adatom islands form and grow with increasing sputter time t. Surface roughness W(t) and lateral correlation length xi(t) follow the scaling laws W(t) approximately t(beta) and xi(t) approximately t(1/z) with the exponents beta approximately 0.20 and 1/z approximately 0.20, for an ion beam energy epsilon=0.5 keV, which is inconsistent with the prediction of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (KS) model. We thereby extend the KS model by applying the coarse-grained continuum approach of the Sigmund theory to the order of O(inverted Delta(4),h(2)), where h is the surface height, and derive a new term of the form inverted Delta(2)(inverted Delta h)(2) which plays a decisive role in describing the observed morphological evolution of the sputtered surface.