Roughness effects on the electrical conductivity of thin films grown in a quasi-layer-by-layer mode - art. no. 125404

We investigate morphology effects on the electrical conductivity on thin se miconducting and metallic films grown in a quasi-layer-by-layer growth mode within the framework of quantum-mechanical electron transport theory. The film growth mode is described by a nonequilibrium Sine-Gordon model that in corporates evaporation/lecondensation, surface diffusion, and lattice pinni ng effects. For semiconducting films, pinning effects manifest themselves a s oscillations superimposed on a smoothly increasing conductivity with grow th time. For metallic films, quantum size effect oscillations are strongly convoluted with pinning induced oscillations, which dominate the conductivi ty variations at later stages of growth.