Conventional and manipulated growth of Cu-Cu(111)

Molecular beam epitaxy of Cu on Cu(111) was studied using thermal energy He scattering, in the temperature range between 100 and 450 K. Three-dimensional growth was observed in the whole temperature range. To determine the onset of various diffusion processes, submonolayer films formed by deposition at low temperature were annealed. Annealing proceeds in two steps. The first step is interpreted as a change in island shape, the second as Ostwald-ripening. A comparison with homoepitaxy on Pt(111) and Ag(111) is made. Growth manipulation was carried out by artificially increasing the island number density via intervention in the nucleation stage of each layer. The procedures applied were temperature reduction during nucleation as well as pulsed ion bombardment. These techniques enabled the convenient growth of good quality films consisting of a large number of monolayers. Finally, the use of oxygen as a surfactant modifying the growth mode was investigated. Under some growth conditions, pre-exposure of the surface to oxygen was found to induce weak He-intensity oscillations during deposition. The quality of the films grown in this way was, however, low

Steering-Enhanced Roughening during Metal Deposition at Grazing Incidence

It is shown that steering may have an important influence on the morphology of growing films. Steering originates from long-range attractive forces between incoming atoms and substrate atoms and leads to preferential arrival of atoms on top of islands. This phenomenon is most pronounced for grazing incidence deposition and results in significantly increased roughness of the growing film. Steering, which is expected to be generally valid but has so far been disregarded in growth studies, is illustrated for the growth of Cu/Cu(001)

Growth Anisotropy and Pattern Formation in Metal Epitaxy

Evidence for the formation of growth induced, ordered checkerboardlike arrangements of mesas has been obtained. These patterns develop on a metal substrate with square symmetry after deposition of tens of monolayers. Its origin is traced back to laterally anisotropic advance rates of island edges in combination with slope selection. The foundation for the mesa arrangement is already laid just after coalescence of the adatom islands in the first monolayer. The results are exemplified in a high resolution surface diffraction study for the growth of Cu on Cu(001)