Kinetic growth with surface diffusion: The scaling aspect

Abstract

We present computer simulations of kinetic growth models with a physically realistic surface diffusion process and without desorption. The results demonstrate that the asymptotic statistical scaling properties of the surface generated under these conditions are still correctly depicted by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) theory. We show that surface diffusion nevertheless introduces a novel type of scaling at early times which will eventually crossover to the KPZ scaling. Furthermore, we make a clear connection between kinetic growth models and molecular-beam-epitaxy processes by illustrating the impact of surface diffusion on reducing the concentration of bulk defects.