Growth of Thin Films

When the adsorbate coverage exceeds the monolayer range, one speaks about thin film growth. The oriented growth of a crystalline film on a single-crystal substrate is referred to as epitaxy, which, in turn, is subdivided into homoepitaxy (when both film and substrate are of the same material) and heteroepitaxy (when film and substrate are different). The film growth is controlled by the interplay of thermodynamics and kinetics. The general trends in film growth are understood within the thermodynamic approach in terms of the relative surface and interface energies. On the other hand, film growth is a non-equilibrium kinetic process, in which the rate-limiting steps affect the net growth mode. In this chapter, the surface phenomena involved in thin film growth and their effect on the growth mode, as well as on the structure and morphology of the grown films, are discussed.