A dynamic scaling and kinetic roughening study was done on digitized atomic force microscope (AFM) images
of Pb(Zr0:52;Ti0:48)O3 (PZT) thin films. The films were grown on Si(001) and Nb¡SrTiO3(001) (STNO)
substrates via rf-sputtering technique at high oxygen pressures at substrate temperatures of 600 oC by varying
the deposition time and keeping other growth parameters fixed. By using a specific self-designed algorithm,
we can extract from digitized 512-pixel resolution AFM-images, quantitative values of roughness parameters,
i.e., interface width (s(`)), lateral correlation length (xjj) and, roughness exponent (a). Herein, we report on
the sputter-time deposition dependence of the parameters describing roughness for both kinds of substrates. We
report a-values for different time depositions (between 15 and 60 minutes) close to 0:55 for Si substrates and
0:63 for Nb¡SrTiO3 substrates, indicating that the surface becomes more correlated in STNO substrates. The
a-values are associated to the Lai-Das-Sarma-Villain model. |
