Use of fractals and kinetic equations to model thermally induced hillock formation and growth in thin metal films

We investigated the applicability of a model based on fractals and the Smoluchowski kinetic equations to describe hillock formation in thin metal films. We have previously used this model to analyze cluster and ultrafine particle production. We show how to extract two parameters from measured hillock size distributions which may reveal the scaling of the mobility of clusters and vacancies in films with varying hillock size. On the basis of our application of this model to certain data taken from the literature, the model shows considerable potential for being able to provide an internally consistent quantitative basis for monitoring thermally driven mass redistribution processes in metal films.