The morphological growth dynamics of chemical vapor deposition is studied with a model that takes account of both diffusive transport in the bulk and the kinetics of surface reactions. For the case of a fixed flux of reactant species far from the surface, we study numerically the crossover from diffusion-limited growth to surface kinetic-limited growth. In the latter case, one can qualitatively account for the morphology at early and intermediate times by use of a nonlinear growth model which takes explicit account of the destabilizing influence of the bulk phase diffusion field.

• Received 17 October 1988

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.62.776