COMMENT ON THE TANGENT RULE

On the basis of our accumulated data for iron films, experimental comment on the tangent rule, which is a functional relation between the incidence angle αI of obliquely deposited films and the inclination angle αc, of columns, is presented. The αc strongly depends on the deposition parameters, such as substrate temperature Ts, deposition rate R, or the vapour beam density Rv and pressure ρ during deposition. The ranges of parameters where the tangent rule is obeyed are very narrow and very limited.