A key aspect that limits the performance of MBE is the roughening of surfaces during the growth process. To better understand this effect we participate in a joint experimental and theoretical effort that is studying the growth of iron on nearly perfect iron surfaces. This system is relevant to future magnetic devices, and it has proven to be a good model system to understand the general behavior of surface roughness during MBE growth. The figure compares some of our results with experiment. The image is 100x100 nm and the gray scale covers a range of 0.9 nm where white indicates higher portions of the surface.
Solid lines indicate equiheight contours, with the heavy line at the mean height.
The comparison of the these figures and other aspects of the growth show that the growth process is more complicated than has been assumed in previous simulations. It also shows that it is likely that growth in many systems can likely be understood in the same context.