Height fluctuations and intermittency of V₂O₅films by atomic force microscopy

The spatial scaling law and intermittency of the V 2 O 5 surface roughness has been investigated by atomic force microscopy. The intermittency of the height fluctuations has been checked by two different methods, first, by measuring the scaling exponent of the q th moment of height-difference fluctuations i.e. C q = ⟨| h ( x 1 ) − h ( x 2 )| q ⟩, and second, by defining the generating function Z ( q , N ) and generalized multi-fractal dimension D q . These methods predict that there is no intermittency in the height fluctuations. The observed roughness and dynamical exponents can be explained by numerical simulation on the basis of the forced Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equation.