Abstract

Self-diffusion in thin nanocrystalline Pt films was investigated using secondary ion mass spectrometry. Our experiments are motivated by recent investigations on stress relaxation where self-diffusion of Pt is supposed to play an important role, especially at temperatures below 250 °C and annealing times of a few hours. For the diffusion experiments, double layers of natPt/194Pt were deposited on oxidized silicon wafers using ion beam sputtering. At 180 °C no significant diffusion induced broadening of the profiles could be observed even after an annealing time of 64 h. However, the concentration of 195Pt in the top layer decreases slightly after an annealing time of 16 h and remains constant for higher annealing times. At 600 °C a broadening of the profiles was observed after an annealing time of 5 minutes. From our results we conclude that at 180 °C only atoms in the grain boundaries are mobile. After about 16 h the isotopes in the grain boundaries are completely interdiffused. From the change of the 195Pt concentration in the top layer we estimate the amount of grain boundary phase in the Pt films to be about 5 %. The broadening of the profile after annealing at 600 °C is attributed to bulk diffusion.

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