We consider a gradient flow modeling the epitaxial growth of thin films with
slope selection. The surface height profile satisfies a nonlinear diffusion
equation with biharmonic dissipation. We establish optimal local and global
wellposedness for initial data with critical regularity. To understand the
mechanism of slope selection and the dependence on the dissipation coefficient,
we exhibit several lower and upper bounds for the gradient of the solution in
physical dimensions d≤3