During my MSc thesis project (Universita degli studi di Milano, 1999-2001), I worked in the group of Prof. Paolo Milani, at the characterisation of the surface morphology of nanostructured carbon films, grown by means of supersonic cluster beam deposition. Encompassing both experimental and theoretical work, in collaboration with Dr. Alessandro Podesta, we used an Atomic Force Microscope to acquire topographical maps of the film surfaces, and used numerical techniques to assess their self-affine structure, and characterize the film growth as a function of the deposition parameters [1]. We also performed an extensive numeri cal analysis of the validity of scale invariance measurements of experimentally sampled profiles [2].


  1. P. Milani, A. Podesta, P. Piseri, E. Barborini, C. Lenardi, and C. Castelnovo
    Cluster assembling of nanostructured carbon films
    Diamond and Related Materials 10, 240 (2001)

  2. C. Castelnovo, A. Podesta, P. Piseri, and P. Milani
    Fractal analysis of sampled profiles: Systematic study
    Physical Review E 65, 021601 (2002)