New epitaxial thin‐film models and numerical approximation

This paper concerns new continuum phenomenological model for epitaxial thin‐film growth with three different forms of the Ehrlich–Schwoebel current. Two of these forms were first proposed by Politi and Villain 1996 and then studied by Evans, Thiel, and Bartelt 2006. The other one is completely new. Energy structure and properties of the new model are studied. Following the techniques used in Li and Liu 2003, we present rigorous analysis of the well‐posedness, regularity, and time stability for the new model. We also studied both the global and the local behavior of the surface roughness in the growth process. By using a convex–concave time‐splitting scheme, one can naturally build unconditionally stable semi‐implicit numerical discretizations with linear implicit parts, which is much easier to implement than conventional models requiring nonlinear implicit parts. Despite this fundamental difference in the model, numerical experiments show that the nonlinear morphological instability of the new model agrees well with results of other models published before which indicates that the new model correctly captures the essential morphological states in the thin‐film growth process. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.