Influence of Fe Underlayers on Stress Evolution of Ti in Ti/Fe Multilayers

Abstract

A series of 40–2 nm bilayer spacing Ti/Fe multilayers were sputter-deposited. As the length scale of individual Ti layers equaled to 2 nm, Ti phase transforms from a hexagonal close packed (hcp)- to-body centered cubic (bcc) crystal structures for equal layer thicknesses in Ti/Fe multilayers. Further equal reductions in bilayer spacing to less than 1 nm resulted in an additional transformation from a crystalline to amorphous structure. Atom probe tomography reveals significant intermixing between layers which contributes to the observed phase transformations. Real-time, intrinsic growth stress measurements were also performed to relate the adatom mobility to these phase transformations. For the hcp Ti/bcc Fe multilayers of equivalent volume fractions, the multilayers undergo an overall tensile stress state to a compressive stress state with decreasing bilayer thickness for the multilayers. When the above phase transformations occurred, a modest reduction in the overall compressive stress of the multilayer was noted. Depending on the Fe thickness, the Ti growth was observed to be a tensile to compressive growth change to a purely compressive growth for thinner bilayer spacing. Fe retained a tensile growth stress regardless of the bilayer spacing studied.

Description
Keywords
Atomic structure, Compressive stress, Tensile stress, Microscopy, Electron diffraction, Enthalpy, Thin films, Tomography, Crystal structure, Phase transitions
Citation
Wan, L., Thompson, G. (2016): Influence of Fe Underlayers on Stress Evolution of Ti in Ti/Fe Multilayers. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A, 34(6).