Formation of nanostructured metallic glass thin films upon sputtering.

Sergey V Ketov,Kazue Kurihara,Kazue Kurihara,Guoqiang Xie,Rastko Joksimovic,Rastko Joksimovic,Dmitri V Louzguine-Luzgin,Dmitri V Louzguine-Luzgin,Artem Trifonov

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2016.e00228

Abstract

Morphology evolution of the multicomponent metallic glass film obtained by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering was investigated in the present work. Two modes of metallic glass sputtering were distinguished: smooth film mode and clustered film mode. The sputtering parameters, which have the most influence on the sputtering modes, were determined. As a result, amorphous Ni-Nb thin films with a smooth surface and nanoglassy structure were deposited on silica float glass and Si substrates. The phase composition of the target appeared to have a significant influence on the chemical composition of the deposited amorphous thin film. The differences in charge transport and nanomechanical properties between the smooth and nanoglassy Ni-Nb film were also determined.

Highlights

Modern nanotechnology is unimaginable without thin films
X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that even though the sputtering was done on the substrate without cooling, the structure of thin films was amorphous (Fig. 2a)
The morphology of the thin film surface highly depends on the sputtering conditions and can change from a smooth to very rough state

Summary

Introduction

Modern nanotechnology is unimaginable without thin films. Inorganic thin films with highly ordered crystal structure have already been used for a long time.Article No~e00228amorphous thin films found a huge interest recently with the development of organic, flexible and transparent electronics [1, 2, 3]. The lack of the long-range order gives glassy thin films unique properties such as high mechanical strength, hardness, corrosion resistance, wear resistance etc. These become useful for amorphous film applications in microelectromechanical MEMS devices, microelectronics, biochemical and others [4, 5, 6, 7]. The most widely used methods for production of the amorphous thin films are physical vapor deposition techniques, one of which is magnetron sputtering. This method is capable of production both ultra smooth films and crystalline nanoclusters [8, 9, 10, 11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion