We have carried out x-ray reflectivity and adsorption measurements on thermally evaporated silver and gold films deposited onto substrates held at 80, 300, and 500 K to investigate whether the surfaces of such films are fractal in nature. Both techniques indicate self-affine fractal scaling for Ag films deposited at near-normal incidence onto substrates held at 80 K.

We have employed a quartz crystal microbalance technique to study the thickness versus pressure dependence of a variety of thin (0 -5 nm) liquid films (water, cyclohexane, nitrogen, krypton, and xenon) adsorbed on metal surfaces. We observe the Lifshitz theory of van der Waals forces to provide an excellent description of nitrogen adsorption, and an inadequate description of water adsorption, with the remaining gases spanning the two extremes.

Brillouin light scattering has been used to study the elastic properties of an InSe film grown epitaxially on a hydrogen-terminated non-reconstructed Si(111) surface. Both generalized Rayleigh - Sezawa and Love acoustic modes have been revealed, and their velocity dispersions measured as functions of the ratio between the film thickness and the acoustic wavelength. This enabled us to determine the complete set of InSe film elastic constants through a non-linear best-fitting procedure.

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