Theoretical and experimental analyses of the deposited silver thin films

Abstract

The silver thin films have been prepared using magnetron DC‐sputtering. We discuss in detail the thin films AFM images and their properties in different sputtering times of 2 to 6 minutes. Despite the low thickness of the films, the roughness saturation amounts, Ws, are well separated. The surface data do not follow the normal Family‐Vicsek scaling, and we have the local growth exponent, β(Ws(t)∼tβ). We obtained the global roughness scaling exponent α=0.36 and growth exponent, β=0.50.We also obtain the fractal spectrum of the data, f(α). The results show that the spectrum is right‐hook like. It distinguishes between different film thicknesses even in small sizes of hundreds of nanometers. Furthermore, we measure the surface conductivities and compare them to the thin film roughnesses. We investigate the roughness and fractality of the AFM data, looking for their relations to width and conductivity of the silver thin film samples.