Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A Année : 2022

Manipulation of thin metal film morphology on weakly interacting substrates via selective deployment of alloying species

Résumé

We demonstrate a versatile concept for manipulating morphology of thin (≤25 nm) noble-metal films on weakly interacting substrates using growth of Ag on SiO 2 as a model system. The concept entails deployment of minority metallic (Cu, Au, Al, Ti, Cr, and Mo) alloying species at the Ag-layer growth front. Data from in situ and real-time monitoring of the deposition process show that all alloying agents—when deployed together with Ag vapor throughout the entire film deposition—favor two-dimensional (2D) growth morphology as compared to pure Ag film growth. This is manifested by an increase in the substrate area coverage for a given amount of deposited material in discontinuous layers and a decrease of the thickness at which a continuous layer is formed, though at the expense of a larger electrical resistivity. Based on ex situ microstructural analyses, we conclude that 2D morphological evolution under the presence of alloying species is predominantly caused by a decrease of the rate of island coalescence completion during the initial film-formation stages. Guided by this realization, alloying species are released with high temporal precision to selectively target growth stages before and after coalescence completion. Pre-coalescence deployment of all alloying agents yields a more pronounced 2D growth morphology, which for the case of Cu, Al, and Au is achieved without compromising the Ag-layer electrical conductivity. A more complex behavior is observed when alloying atoms are deposited during the post-coalescence growth stages: Cu, Au, Al, and Cr favor 2D morphology, while Ti and Mo yield a more pronounced three-dimensional morphological evolution. The overall results presented herein show that targeted deployment of alloying agents constitutes a generic platform for designing bespoken heterostructures between metal layers and technologically relevant weakly interacting substrates.

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hal-03830026 , version 1 (16-10-2023)

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Andreas Jamnig, Nikolaos Pliatsikas, Gregory Abadias, Kostas Sarakinos. Manipulation of thin metal film morphology on weakly interacting substrates via selective deployment of alloying species. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A, 2022, 40 (3), pp.033407. ⟨10.1116/6.0001700⟩. ⟨hal-03830026⟩
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