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Updated: Aug 19, 2026
Film Control to Study Contributions of Waves to Droplet Impact Dynamics on Thin Flowing Liquid Films
Published on: August 18, 2018
Observed effects of a changing step-edge density on thin-film growth dynamics
Aaron Fleet1, Darren Dale, Y Suzuki
1School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Abstract:
We grew SrTiO(3) on SrTiO(3)(001) by pulsed laser deposition, while observing x-ray diffraction at the (00(1/2)) position. The drop DeltaI in the x-ray intensity following a laser pulse contains information about plume-surface interactions. Kinematic theory predicts DeltaI/I = -4sigma(1 - sigma), so that DeltaI /I depends only on the amount of deposited material sigma. In contrast, we observed experimentally that |DeltaI /I| < 4sigma(1 - sigma) and that DeltaI /I depends on the phase of x-ray growth oscillations. The combined results suggest a fast smoothing mechanism that depends on surface step-edge density.
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