AVS 47th International Symposium
    Thin Films Wednesday Sessions
       Session TF-WeM

Paper TF-WeM7
Extension Velocities for Level Set Based Surface Profile Evolution

Wednesday, October 4, 2000, 10:20 am, Room 203

Session: Modeling of Thin Film Growth
Presenter: D.F. Richards, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Authors: D.F. Richards, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
S. Sen, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
M.O. Bloomfield, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
T.S. Cale, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Correspondent: Click to Email
Level set based front-tracking methods represent an attractive alternative to more traditional node and segment based approaches to tracking interface motion. Level set methods avoid many topological difficulties which arise in node-moving schemes and are easily extended to three dimensions. However, level set methods also require knowledge of the speed function at every point in the solution domain. This is a somewhat troublesome requirement for profile evolution models since the interface speed may have no physical meaning at points that are not on the surface. The solution to this problem is to formulate extension velocities that in some way extrapolate speeds from the interface to other points in the solution domain. We compare several different methods for determining extension velocities and discuss the characteristics of node and segment approach that are helpful in calculating extension velocities.