Hi Ayman. As i know, there is no effect of electrical resistance on surface morphology of thin film. Mainly thermal resistance plays a dominant role in between the substrate and the film. Electrical resistance of substrate comes in account when someone use substrate bias, during deposition. At higher substrate bias, electrical resistance plays most dominant role. Because at higher biasing ad-atoms pinned in to the substrate and can change the substrate's electrical resistance. Here you can relate the electrical resistance with the morphology. 

thanks for your attention, with your appreciate answer. but it's the same for the electrode depostion?

thank you  

Isn't the termal resistance kind of related to electrical resistance when it comes to metals? So that means there is a dependency. And when ever you use some kind of voltage to drive your deposition, of course the resistance can define how strong your gradiant is. Therefore in any case the resistance will make a difference, whether it is dominant or not must be decided for each special case.

The morphology do play a role in conductivity of thin films. The grains should have some contacts to allow electron  flow. If island like morphology is present the films are likely to be insulating. The contacts  should be able to connect and collect the electrons and hence morphology also play a role in conductivity

Very interesting question. There is a texture effect also. I think texture plays role on electrical resistance too.  Different texture can give different resistance.  Grain size. orientation. If you use different textured substrate during vapor transport some grain orientations will affect your morphology.  

Example: YBCO has superconductivity only in one orientation direction. 

Nucleation  is also easier in some grain orientations.

The last two answers were quite interesting, but i think they do not match the question. He wanted to know how conductivity changes the growth of the layers and not the other way around.

Dear Tobias. 

Maybe I could not explain very well. Let's don't talk about different thickness/ resistivity films. This is quite trivial.

We make question more interesting. The same thickness film can have different conductivity. What do you think why? How that affect the morphology of deposited film.

thanks all, it is interesting. let me explain more, i prepared metal oxide on substrates have different sheet resistance i found that

1) nucleation density decrease with increasing the resistance  (i thought: effect of resistance)

2) the metal oxide morphology were  completely difference (i thought: effect of the substrate morphology )

how can i interpret ?  N.B. i didn't find any article assigned to the effect of the resistance   

Maybe its not a direct cause of the resistance but rather the lattice constant. A stronger bound lattice would cause a higher conductivity and has a different "seed" for the grwoing layer. That may cause the difference that you observe.

excuse me, can you suggest to me some papers or book for this point. 

thanks 

Ayman! "Does the electrical resistance of the substrate have an effect on the morphology of the deposited film?"

Only if the "resistance" is caused by crystallographic lattice defects which could also affect the "growth or seeding" of the deposited film. In semiconductors for instance, the resistance may be altered by minor doping without significant change in defect morphology.

By your question, is it proper to assume you are discussing polycrystalline substrate and polycrystalline film? What materials systems are of interest to you? How much mismatch? 

Electrical Properties of Dislocations in Semiconductors, R. Labusch and W. Schroter. From Dislocations in Solids, Editor F. R. N. Nabarro, Volume 5, 1980.

pp. 162.

"8. Dislocations in III-V compounds

In III-V compounds the two face centered sublattices of the diamond structure are occupied by different kinds of atoms. The (111) slip planes are alternately occupied by atoms of group III and atoms of group V. The core of an edge type dislocation therefore may consist of atoms of group III or group V, depending on the sign of the dislocation. As first pointed out by Hansen [87], the dynamical and electrical properties of the two types should be different on account of their different cores.

This qualitative statement is fully confirmed by velocity measurements of single dislocation half loops in InSb [39, 88-90] and GaAs [90]. So far, the electrical properties of dislocations have been studied in detail only for InSb [6, 91-97].................."

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