Investigation of conditions for a self-organized transition to the bistable regime of quasi-equilibrium condensation and stripping of the surface

Abstract

The conditions providing the closeness of the steady-state condensation/sputtering process to the phase equilibrium have been analyzed in the framework of the synergetic approach. It has been shown that fluctuations in the temperature of the growth surface and in the desorption flow of adatoms play the role of a multiplicative noise so that the enhancement of this noise leads to a transformation of the unimodal distribution of supersaturation of a deposited component into the bimodal distribution. It has been demonstrated that this transformation is ensured by the dependence of the supersaturation relaxation time on the multiplicative noise. The proposed pattern has been confirmed by the experimental data according to which the bistability manifests itself in the fact that the steady state of the quasi-equilibrium plasma-condensate system corresponds to both the sputtering and the self-organized regime of stripping of the preliminarily deposited condensate.