In the first part of this talk, studies on the surface morphology evolution of Silicon(100) during low energy Argon ion bombardment using real-time grazing-incidence x-ray techniques will be presented. It is observed that although Si surfaces remain smooth during bombardment at room temperature; when a small amount of Molybdenum atoms is supplied to the surface, correlated structures with two different characteristic length scales develop; short length scale “nanodots” and kinetic roughening at large length scales. The early time kinetics of these structures is extensively studied and a linear theory that involves a new noise term associated with inhomogeneities in local relaxation is proposed to quantitatively explain the early time kinetics.

In the second part, the kinetic studies of initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) of polymeric thin-films will be presented. For the conformality studies performed on the polymeric films grown on the microtrenches, a ballistic model correlating the step coverage with the radical sticking coefficient is used. The results show that the degree of conformality depends on the sticking coefficient which increases with monomer surface concentration. In the final part of the talk, several iCVD applications such as anti-fouling coatings for RO membranes, ultra-high moisture barriers for flexible electronics and shape memory polymers will be presented.