The effect of energy of Ar recoil particles on the interfaces and micro-structure in Ni/Ti multilayer fabricated by direct current magnetron sputtering technique

Abstract

Ni/Ti multilayers have been therefore widely used in neutron optics devices because of their excellent reflective properties for neutrons, which is strongly dependent to their interfaces and microstructure. Hence, there have been many attempts to improve the interfaces and microstructure of Ni/Ti multilayers, for example reactive sputtering, interlayers and so on. In this paper, the influence of energy of Ar recoil particles on the interface and micro-structure of Ni/Ti multilayers were completed, through varying the sputtering pressure. Firstly, the Simulation present that the decreasing of sputtering pressure would enlarge the number recoil particle proportion. Secondly, three Ni/Ti multilayers were fabricated by direct current sputtering technique with variable sputtering pressures (0.080Pa, 0.120Pa, 0.199Pa). Thirdly, the grazing incidence X-ray reflectometry (GIXRR), diffusing scattering, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) were used to characterize the interfaces and micro-structure of these films. The measured results present that their interfacial width and roughness were variable as diseasing the sputtering pressure, and the micro-structure of Ni layers transform from (111) only to both (111) and (100). These experimental results could result from the effects of energy of both Ar recoil particles and the Ni, Ti depositing atoms.