Co-GISAXS as a New Technique to Investigate Surface Growth Dynamics

Abstract

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-WSi${}_2$ thin films. For both films, kinetic roughening during surface growth reaches a dynamic steady state at late times in which the intensity autocorrelation function $g_2$(q,t) becomes stationary. The $g_2$(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.

arXiv comment32 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Slow dynamics in glassy soft matter
• Evolution of particle-scale dynamics in an aging clay suspension
• Direct measurement of antiferromagnetic domain fluctuations
• High Contrast X-ray Speckle from Atomic-Scale Order in Liquids and Glasses
• Using coherent X-rays to directly measure the propagation velocity of defects during thin film deposition

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Role of ferroelectric polarization during growth of highly strained ferroelectrics revealed by in-situ x-ray diffraction
• Coherent X-ray measurement of step-flow propagation during growth on polycrystalline thin film surfaces