Growth of hexagonal plate crystal in vacuum-deposited amorphous films of antimony

Abstract

Hexagonal plate crystals (HPC) grow at the expense of the surrounding amorphous regions during isothermal annealing at an arbitrary temperature, Ta, for Sb films deposited onto glass or SiOx coated glass substrates held at -130°C in a vacuum of 10-5 Torr. The growth rate of HPC, Rh, was determined from the measurement of the diagonal of HPC with an optical microscope. A ln Rh versus 1/Ta relationship leads to the conclusion that the growth of HPC is under the control of some activation process whose activation energy changes at a certain temperature, Tc: 0.5 eV at TaTc and 1.8 eV at Ta < Tc. It is proposed that growth is due to a successive or series type reaction in the amorphous phase: One process is similar to self-diffusion in a crystalline-like amorphous phase; the other is associated with some re-ordering process to form a crystalline-like amorphous phase in the as-deposited amorphous phase.