Date of Award

8-29-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Applied Science

First Advisor

Tansel Karabacak

Abstract

In re-emission process during thin film growth, atoms that do not stick to the surface based on a sticking probability are re-emitted and can stick to other surface points. This process allows atoms to reach valleys of the surface, which are normally shadowed by higher surface points, leading to a smoothening effect. Although re-emission has been applied to sputter deposition and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth modeling, which successfully predicts the dynamic morphological evolution, so far, no re-emission based modeling method has been developed for thermal evaporation growth. Thermal evaporation is a commonly used thin film deposition technique especially for low melting point elemental materials. Therefore, I developed a new growth modeling approach for thermal evaporation thin film deposition process that takes into the effects of re-emission. The modeling method is based on Monte Carlo simulation techniques and numerical solution of a continuum growth equation that include the effects of re-emission, shadowing, surface diffusion, and noise. Thin film morphologies obtained from Monte Carlo simulations and by numerically solving the growth equation were investigated for their dynamic evolution of surface roughness.

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