Fractal scaling in thin film condensation and material surfaces

Abstract

Surfaces and interfaces play a crucial role in a very broad spectrum of natural and commercial processes involving solid materials. It is common to idealize the geometry of these surfaces by smooth planes. However, only in very rare cases (such as mica or carefully prepared low index single crystal faces) are surfaces smooth down to atomic length scales. In some cases, the deviations from the idealized planar geometry are small and we can think in terms of various types of “defects” in an otherwise perfect surface. As the defect density becomes larger, interactions between defects become important and the “isolated defect” picture becomes less useful.