Co-GISAXS technique for investigating surface growth dynamics

Detailed quantitative measurement of surface dynamics during thin film growth is a major experimental challenge. Here X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy with coherent hard X-rays is used in a Grazing-Incidence Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (i.e. Co-GISAXS) geometry as a new tool to investigate nanoscale surface dynamics during sputter deposition of a-Si and a-WSi2 thin films. For both films, kinetic roughening during surface growth reaches a dynamic steady state at late times in which the intensity autocorrelation function g2(q,t) becomes stationary. The g2(q,t) functions exhibit compressed exponential behavior at all wavenumbers studied. The overall dynamics are complex, but the most surface sensitive sections of the structure factor and correlation time exhibit power law behaviors consistent with dynamical scaling.