Temperature dependent reentrant smooth growth in Ag(001) homoepitaxy

We present a scanning tunnelling microscopy investigation of homoepitaxial growth on Ag(001) in the multilayer regime. The deposition of 33 monolayers (ML) of silver at a flux of 0.075 ML s(-1), produces mound-like structures whose height, lateral distance and order change with the deposition temper ature T-dep. In particular the temperature dependence of the surface roughn ess is characterised by a bell shape with a maximum around 200 K. The slope of the mound sides is found to increase monotonically with decreasing temp erature until, for T-dep < 150 K, it saturates at a value corresponding to an average terrace width of less than two atomic spacings. The experimental measurements are compared with recent kinetic Monte Carlo simulation resul ts on the same system and a good agreement is found. (C) 2000 Elsevier Scie nce B.V. All rights reserved.