Competitive dynamic growth of interfaces.

C. HOROWITZ; I.M.IRURZUN; R.MONETTI; E. V. ALBANO

Current Topics in Surface and Interfaces Sciences.

Año: 2002; p. 19 - 32

(Review por invitación)   The concept of fractal geometry, introduced by B. Mandelbrot early in the 1970s has become a solid framework for the study of a wide variety of phenomena and processes in various scientific fields. The idea of fractal geometry is closely related to properties invariant under a change of scale: a fractal structure is the same “from near and from far”. The concepts of scale invariance and self-similarity have been developed in the field of physics, particularly in the study of second-order phase transitions. However, the occurrence of scale invariance has quickly been identified in many fields of science including chemistry, biology, geography, geology and even economy. Within the wide context of fractals, the study and understanding of the properties of growing interfaces has attracted great interest. In fact, interfaces are ubiquitous in Nature and their study has opened a promising field of multidisciplinary research. Interfaces naturally emerge in a wide variety of systems such as film growth by vapor deposition, chemical deposition or molecular beam epitaxy, propagation of fire fronts, bacterial growth, solidification, propagation of reaction fronts in catalysed reactions, electrodeposition/ dissolution experiments, ballistic deposition, sedimentation, etc. Of course, interfaces can also be generated by various physical, chemical or biological mechanisms such as deposition, corrosion, fracture, reaction, dissolution, etc. Before the introduction of the concept of fractals, irregular interfaces were ambiguously characterised by their “roughness”. Nowadays, the self-affine description of rough interfaces has become a powerful tool for the characterisation of interfaces and allows for a more precise comparison between models and experiments.