Effect of growth rate and thickness on kinetic roughening and multifractal properties of electrodeposited Ni thin films

The effects of growth rate and deposition time on the surface roughness and statistical properties of electrodeposited Ni thin films were studied using the atomic force microscopy technique. The stochastic analysis and multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) methods were applied to calculate the Ni film roughness. The results clearly show that the film surface roughness increases as the deposition current density or film thickness increases. By comparing the MF-DFA results of the original series to those for shuffled and surrogate series, one can distinguish the fractality due to long range correlations and a broad probability density function. A generalised scaling exponent of partition function, fractal dimensions, Holder exponent and singularity spectrum is determined. The fractality nature is mainly attributed to the long range correlations.