Open AccessSurface roughening and growth mode transition of polycrystalline thin films
Author(s) -
Yang Ji-Jun,
Ke Xu
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
wuli xuebao
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 47
ISSN - 1000-3290
DOI - 10.7498/aps.56.1110
Subject(s) - materials science , crystallite , scaling , condensed matter physics , exponent , surface roughness , surface diffusion , thin film , sputter deposition , diffusion , substrate (aquarium) , sputtering , nanotechnology , thermodynamics , composite material , chemistry , physics , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , geometry , adsorption , oceanography , geology , metallurgy
Surface roughening of Cu and Ta polycrystalline thin films deposited by magnetron sputtering at different homologous temperature Ts/Tm (Ts and Tm are the substrate temperature and the material melting point, respectively) have been studied using atomic force microscopy. With increasing Ts/Tm, the surface roughness of the films increased and growth exponent first increased and then decreased. The observed temperature dependence of growth exponent indicates a transition of growth modes from random growth at lower Ts/Tm through surface diffusion-dominated growth at intermediate Ts/Tm to anomalous scaling growth at higher Ts/Tm. We also found that the surface roughening of the films reflects the anomalous scaling behavior when the value of Ts/Tm is lower than 0.41, which implies that the boundary diffusion mechanism plays an important role in the scaling behavior of surface roughening.