How metal films de-wet substrates - identifying the kinetic pathways and energetic driving forces

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: How metal films de-wet substrates - identifying the kinetic pathways and energetic driving forces
المؤلفون: McCarty, Kevin F., Hamilton, John C., Sato, Yu, Saa, Angela, Stumpf, Roland, de la Figuera, Juan, Thurmer, Konrad, Jones, Frank, Schmid, Andreas K., Talin, A. Alec, Bartelt, Norman C.
المصدر: New Journal of Physics 11 (2009) 043001
سنة النشر: 2009
المجموعة: Condensed Matter
مصطلحات موضوعية: Condensed Matter - Materials Science
الوصف: We study how single-crystal chromium films of uniform thickness on W(110) substrates are converted to arrays of three-dimensional (3D) Cr islands during annealing. We use low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) to directly observe a kinetic pathway that produces trenches that expose the wetting layer. Adjacent film steps move simultaneously uphill and downhill relative to the staircase of atomic steps on the substrate. This step motion thickens the film regions where steps advance. Where film steps retract, the film thins, eventually exposing the stable wetting layer. Since our analysis shows that thick Cr films have a lattice constant close to bulk Cr, we propose that surface and interface stress provide a possible driving force for the observed morphological instability. Atomistic simulations and analytic elastic models show that surface and interface stress can cause a dependence of film energy on thickness that leads to an instability to simultaneous thinning and thickening. We observe that de-wetting is also initiated at bunches of substrate steps in two other systems, Ag/W(110) and Ag/Ru(0001). We additionally describe how Cr films are converted into patterns of unidirectional stripes as the trenches that expose the wetting layer lengthen along the W[001] direction. Finally, we observe how 3D Cr islands form directly during film growth at elevated temperature. The Cr mesas (wedges) form as Cr film steps advance down the staircase of substrate steps, another example of the critical role that substrate steps play in 3D island formation.
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/11/4/043001
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.1037
رقم الانضمام: edsarx.0904.1037
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv
الوصف
DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/11/4/043001