I. Koponen et M. Hautala, MODELING ION-BOMBARDMENT INDUCED SUBMICRON-SCALE SURFACE ROUGHENING, Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms, 103(2), 1995, pp. 156-160
Ion bombardment induced surface roughening in submicron-scale is model
led. The effect of ion beam on the evolution of the surface is describ
ed as a Levy stable shot noise. Height fluctuations are assumed to be
smoothed out only by surface tension or diffusion, which is driven by
height gradient. The resulting noise driven diffusion equation leads t
o the development of self-affine surfaces, where the roughness exponen
t ct depends on the distribution of noise amplitude. High values of al
pha approximate to 0.5 recently observed in experiments are shown to r
esult from a shot noise proportional to the typical recoil displacemen
ts in cascades created by low energy, heavy ion bombardment.