  Thin film coatings have been essential in development of several micro and
nano-scale devices. To realize thin film coatings various deposition techniques
are employed, each yielding surface morphologies with different characteristics
of interest. Therefore, understanding and control of the surface growth is of
great interest. In this paper, we devise a novel network-based modeling of the
growth dynamics of such thin films and nano-structures. We specifically map
dynamic steps taking place during the growth to components (e.g., nodes, links)
of a corresponding network. We present initial results showing that this
network-based modeling approach to the growth dynamics can simplify our
understanding of the fundamental physical dynamics such as shadowing and
re-emission effects.
