The random deposition model must be enriched to reflect the variety of
surface roughness due to some material characteristics of the film growing by
vacuum deposition or sputtering. The essence of the computer simulation in this
case is to account for possible surface migration of atoms just after the
deposition, in connection with binding energy between atoms (as the mechanism
provoking the diffusion) and/or diffusion energy barrier. The interplay of
these two factors leads to different morphologies of the growing surfaces from
flat and smooth ones, to rough and spiky ones. In this paper we extended our
earlier calculation by applying some extra diffusion barrier at the edges of
terrace-like structures, known as Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier. It is
experimentally observed that atoms avoid descending when the terrace edge is
approach and these barriers mimic this tendency. Results of our Monte Carlo
computer simulations are discussed in terms of surface roughness, and compared
with other model calculations and some experiments from literature. The power
law of the surface roughness σ against film thickness t was confirmed.
The nonzero minimum value of the growth exponent β near 0.2 was obtained
which is due to the limited range of the surface diffusion and the
Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier. Observations for different diffusion range are also
discussed. The results are also confronted with some deterministic growth
models.Comment: 12 pages + 8 figures (to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. C, journal
style applied