Effects of coating rate on morphology of copper surfaces

TL;DR

This study investigates how varying coating rates influence the surface morphology of copper thin films, revealing that higher rates lead to smoother, more multifractal surfaces with smaller grain sizes.

Contribution

It introduces a combined fractal and Markov analysis approach to quantify the effects of coating rate on copper surface roughness and multifractality.

Findings

Higher coating rates decrease grain size and Markov length.

Increased coating rates lead to more multifractal surfaces.

Surface roughness exponent decreases with higher coating rates.

Abstract

We have used standard fractal analysis and Markov approach to obtain further insights on roughness and multifractality of different surfaces. The effect of coating rates on generating topographic rough surfaces in copper thin films with same thickness has been studied using atomic force microscopy technique (AFM). Our results show that by increasing the coating rates, correlation length (grain sizes) and Markov length are decreased and roughness exponent is decreased and our surfaces become more multifractal. Indeed, by decreasing the coating rate, the relaxation time of embedding the particles is increased.