Origin of intensity oscillations in grazing ion scattering during epitaxial growth: a computational approach

Grazing ion-surface scattering is a real-space technique to obtain statisti cal information on the morphology of disordered surfaces, and is particular ly suited for studying growth processes. Based on computer simulations of i on scattering from submonolayer films modeled by Markov chains, we address the question which morphological quantity causes oscillations in the intens ity of reflected ions during layer-by-layer growth. We find that the releva nt quantity is the pair correlation between atoms separated by a characteri stic distance given by the experimental parameters: rather than surface rou ghness or step density, as assumed in simple models. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.