FIZIKA A 4 (1995) 2, 343-349

STRUCTURE AND SURFACE MORPHOLOGY OF SPUTTERED POLYCRYSTALLINE AND NANOCRYSTALLINE Ti FILMS

JINDRICH MUSIL, VLASTIMIL JEŽEK, MARCEL BENDA, MILAN KUBÁSEK, DAGMAR JANDOVÁ and JAROSLAV VLČEK
University of West Bohemia, Americká 42, Plzeń, Czech Republic

Received 7 April 1995

We investigate the effect of ion bombardment on the structure and surface morphology of polycrystalline Ti (purity of 99.5 %) and nanocrystalline Ti-SS (stainless steel) films deposited by DC magnetron sputter ion plating (MSIP) process. The development of the structure and surface roughness with increasing negative substrate bias U_s, strongly differs in polycrystalline Ti and in nanocrystalline Ti-SS films. The Ti films sputtered under U_s ranging from 0 to -1500 V are regularly polycrystalline, while the Ti-SS films with a high content of SS elements, are nanocrystalline, even if sputtered at zero bias. The surface roughness of polycrystalline films increases with increasing negative bias U_s and in Ti films sputtered at high U_s (greater than -1000 V) reaches high values up to several micrometers. On the contrary, the surface of Ti-SS films sputtered at U_s from 0 up to -1000 V is smooth and the surface roughness does not depend on the ion bombardment. Moreover, nanocrystalline Ti-SS films have a smoother surface than polycrystalline Ti films sputtered at zero bias. This is due to the large difference in the grain size of nanocrystalline (about 1 nm) and polycrystalline (hundreds of nm) films.

UDC 538.975
PACS 61.80.Jh, 68.90.+g

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