On the surface roughness evolution during a-Si:H growth

The surface roughness evolution during a-Si:H film growth from a SiH3 beam under purely chemical deposition conditions is discussed. The data is explained in terms of the different universality classes proposed in literature. It is argued that roughness evolution during a-Si:H growth shows great similarity with MBE growth, which belongs to a universality class studied extensively by Das Sarma and coworkers. The activation energy for surface diffusion extracted from simulating the growth exponent β vs. temperature reveals an activation energy of about 1 eV. This result suggests that the surface roughness evolution is not controlled by the weakly adsorbed SiH3 radical