Abstract
Numerical study of the influence of pulsed laser deposited TiN thin films’ microstructure morphologies on strain heterogeneities during loading was the goal of this research. The investigation was based on the digital material representation (DMR) concept applied to replicate an investigated thin film’s microstructure morphology. The physically based pulsed laser deposited model was implemented to recreate characteristic features of a thin film microstructure. The kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) approach was the basis of the model in the first part of the work. The developed kMC algorithm was used to generate thin film’s three-dimensional representation with its columnar morphology. Such a digital model was then validated with the experimental data from metallographic analysis of laboratory deposited TiN(100)/Si. In the second part of the research, the kMC generated DMR model of thin film was incorporated into the finite element (FE) simulation. The 3D film’s morphology was discretized with conforming finite element mesh, and then incorporated as a microscale model into the macroscale finite element simulation of nanoindentation test. Such a multiscale model was finally used to evaluate the development of local deformation heterogeneities associated with the underlying microstructure morphology. In this part, the capabilities of the proposed approach were clearly highlighted.
Highlights
Accepted: 27 March 2021The deposition process of thin films by laser ablation has been known since the1970s [1]
In these applications, development of any internal defects in the thin film due to, e.g., local strain localization occurring during exploitation conditions, is unacceptable
The primary representative of these technologies is the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method [4], which is a modification of the standard physical vapor deposition (PVD)
Summary
The stoichiometry of the target material is reflected in the films very well, improving adhesion between the layer and the substrate These properties result mainly from the fact that particles in an atomic beam have considerable kinetic energies (0.1–100 eV), which increase the diffusion rate of adatoms at the surface [5]. At first, authors decided to develop a numerical model of the PLD deposition process, which can support experimental research and provide reliable data on thin film morphologies for further studies of their behavior under exploitation conditions. Reliable digital material representation (DMR) of the thin film microstructure morphology numerical model of the deposition process was developed first It provides a digital representation model [8,9] of layers for subsequent numerical simulations of deformation under nanoindentation conditions [10] as a function of deposition process parameters. The complex nanoindentation model will provide a basic understanding of local heterogeneous material response to deformation conditions
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