The decomposition of the surface morphology of films into well-defined elements, which are spatially distributed, allows us to obtain a versatile set of parameters to describe the element shape. The roughness is explicitly expressed in terms of such shape parameters. Based on that, the thickness dependence of the resulting roughness for a competitive columnar growth of evaporated Au[111] thin films was predicted, exhibiting a good agreement with experimental data. The roughness expression is subsequently generalized to a wider set of functional systems with attractive morphologies. The decomposition method proposed here is thus revealed as a promising surface-analysis tool.
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