Surfactant-Mediated Surface Growth: Nonequilibrium Theory

A number of recent experiments have showed that surfactants can modify the growth mode of an epitaxial film, suppressing islanding and promoting layer-by-layer growth. Here a set of coupled equations are introduced to describe the coupling between a growing interface and a thin surfactant layer deposited on the top of the nonequilibrium surface . The equations are derived using the main experimentally backed characteristics of the system and basic symmetry principles. The system is studied using a dynamic-renormalization-group scheme, which provides scaling relations between the roughness exponents. It is found that the surfactant may drive the system into a novel phase, in which the surface roughness is negative, corresponding to a flat surface.

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