Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) of homoepitaxial SrTiO3 <001> was studied with in-situ x-ray specular reflectivity and surface diffuse x-ray scattering. Unlike prior reflectivity-based studies, these measurements access both the time- and the length-scales of the evolution of the surface morphology during growth. In particular, we show that this technique allows direct measurements of the diffusivity for both inter- and intra-layer transport. Our results explicitly limit the possible role of island break-up, demonstrate the key roles played by nucleation and coarsening in PLD, and place an upper bound on the Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barrier for downhill diffusion.
@article{arxiv.0910.3601,
title = {Measurements of Surface Diffusivity and Coarsening During Pulsed Laser Deposition},
author = {J. D. Ferguson and G. Arikan and D. S. Dale and A. R. Woll and J. D. Brock},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.3601},
year = {2015}
}