Reliable determination of kinetics parameters of adatoms in thin-film epitaxy

We show that in an interrupted step-flow epitaxy on a vicinal surface, the decay of adatom monomer density on terraces after deposition often has a simple dependence on the monomer diffusion coefficient D, the step-edge sticking probability S, and the extra step-edge energy barrier E_step (Schwoebel-Ehrlich barrier). One may reliably determine these kinetics parameters by examining the dependence of the decay rate constant on the average terrace width and the temperature. Such a decay can be monitored by either reflection high-energy electron diffraction or optical reflectance difference techniques.