Noise induced effects at nano-structured thin films growth during deposition in plasma-condensate devices

TL;DR

This paper investigates how stochastic fluctuations, particularly electric field noise, influence pattern formation, phase transitions, and surface morphology during nano-structured thin film growth in plasma-condensate devices.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic reaction-diffusion model accounting for electric field fluctuations and demonstrates their role in inducing phase transitions and controlling surface patterning.

Findings

Fluctuations induce first-order phase transitions.

Noise influences surface pattern morphology.

Electric field fluctuations affect growth dynamics.

Abstract

We perform a comprehensive study of noise-induced effects in a stochastic model of reaction-diffusion type, describing nano-structured thin films growth at condensation. We introduce an external flux of adsorbate between neighbour monoatomic layers caused by the electrical field presence near substrate in plasma-condensate devices. We take into account that the strength of the electric field fluctuates around its mean value. We discuss a competing influence of the regular and stochastic parts of the external flux onto the dynamics of adsorptive system. It will be shown that the introduced fluctuations induce first-order phase transition in a homogeneous system, govern the pattern formation in a spatially extended system; these parts of the flux control the dynamics of the patterning, spatial order, morphology of the surface, growth law of the mean size of adsorbate islands, type and linear size of surface structures. The influence of the intensity of fluctuations onto scaling and statistical properties of the nano-structured surface is analysed in detail. This study provides an insight into the details of noise induced effects at pattern formation processes in anisotropic adsorptive systems.