Atomic Force Microscope Studies of CuCl Island Formation on CaF2(111) Substrates

摘要

We have grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) CuCl thin films at variousthickness and substrate temperatures on CaF2 (111) substrates. Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) topographs reveal that islanding is the dominant growth mechanism. Quantitative analysis of the AFM data enabled us to determine the amount of the substrate remaining exposed after the deposition as well as the total amount of CuCl deposited We calculated the reciprocal-space height correlation function , for each of our films and compared them to the predictions of the Shadowing Growth Theory, which enabled us to extract the important kinetic parameter of surface diffusion length for the growth condition of each of the four films.