Silver thin films are ideal for use in optics due to their reflective properties and in electronics due to their excellent conductive properties. Silver is easily understood as a
bulk material but not as a thin film. Stresses in thin films, due mostly to expansion coefficients, build up differently in (111) and (200) grain orientations. Grains with (111) orientation build
up 2.5 times as much stress as (200). It is hard to try and understand these different grains when they are mixed evenly throughout a film. So, in order to develop a further understanding, we need
two samples of the film with identical properties; except one is mostly (111) and the other mostly (200). It has been shown that as film thickness increases, the favored orientation shifts from
(111) to (200). Due to the poor adhesion of silver, this change is gradual, and by adding an adhesion layer of titanium the transition is quicker. By varying the thicknesses of our films and using
X-ray diffraction we can find samples of near similar thickness but different preferred orientations.
Publisher
Cornell Center for Materials Research
Date
2007-08-29
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Additional Notes
Support for the CCMR is provided through the NSF Grant DMR 0520404, part of the NSF MRSEC Program. Additional support is provided by Cornell University, the State of New York, and
by industrial sources.
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