Universality issues in surface kinetic roughening of thin solid films

Since publication of the main contributions on the theory of kinetic roughening more than fifteen years ago, many works have been reported on surface growth or erosion that employ the framework of dynamic scaling. This interest was mainly due to the predicted existence of just a few universality classes to describe the statistical properties of the morphology of growing surfaces and interfaces that appear in a wide range of physical systems. Nowadays, this prediction seems to be inaccurate. This situation has caused a clear detriment of these studies in spite of the undeniable existence of kinetic roughening in many different real systems, and without a clear understanding of the reasons behind the mismatch between theoretical expectations and experimental observations. In this chapter we aim to explore existing problems and shortcomings of both the theoretical and experimental approaches, focusing mainly on growth of thin solid films. Our analysis suggests that the theoretical framework as yet is not complete, while more systematic and consistent experiments need to be performed. Once these issues are taken into account, a more consistent and useful theory of kinetic roughening might develop. To appear in Advances in Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics E. Korutcheva and R. Cuerno, editors (Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2004)