Abstract:
In this article, a variety of synthetic (or simulated) surfaces of various morphologies of
thin films and their fractal analyses are presented. Similar scaling factors have been used
to generate the synthetic images in Gwydion software. The surfaces are based on the
actual morphologies arising from various thin film deposition techniques. Using actual
thin films of CdTe deposited by radio-frequency (RF) sputtering technique, we have
successfully shown that the fractal analyses on the synthetic surfaces can be used to
explain, theoretically, the development and self-affinity of various thin films. Based on
this validation, the results of fractal analyses on different morphologies of thin films were
generated using different fractal methods in Gwydion software. The methods used here
include Minkowski functionals, height-to-height correlation, areal autocorrelation, and
power spectral density functions. The article will be a good resource for explaining the
fractal behavior and morphology of thin films arising from different deposition methods.