Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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Outline
• Stresses & Strains
• Residual stresses
• Thin film formation
• Growth modes
• Mechanisms of intrinsic stress
• Effect of sputtering
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Stresses & Strains
Unreleased structure Released structure with stress Thermally actuated structure
http://matthieu.lagouge.free.fr/phd_project/extractor.html
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Approach to analyzing films
Types of residual stress
Extrinsic stress: due to post-deposition
processing or external influences
– Thermal property differences
– Impurity contamination
Intrinsic stress: stress in the as-deposited
film
– Caused by microstructure of the film
• Function of process parameters
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Residual stress
Origins of extrinsic stress
• Thermal stress –
– deposition T ≠ measurement T
• Adsorption of polar molecules within
porous structure of film. Polar molecules
interact with each other which introduces
extra forces.
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Extrinsic stress
Thin film formation
• Thermodynamics surface free energies arguments…
• But deposition process strongly influenced by kinetics
parameters, defects, … which determine when and how
nucleation takes place…
not in thermodynamic equilibrium
• Basically…
– Film atoms do not wet the substrate surface
Volmer-Weber growth mode
– Film atoms wet the substrate surface
Frank-Van der Merwe growth mode
– Other cases where it is in between (mixed mode)…
Stranski-Krastanov growth mode
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Materials Science
Thin film formation
• Physical vapor deposition (PVD)
~0.1 eV 2
Evaporated atoms
• Epitaxial growth typically follows
Frank-van der Merwe growth Thermal
mode. evaporation
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Volmer-Weber growth
TEM of Ag films deposited in UHV on MgF2 coated
glass substrates
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Materials Science
Percolation
Control of percolation thickness important for applications:
- Near percolation thickness, small changes in
composition, bias, temperature
large changes in electrical conductivity & optical transparency2
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Volmer-Weber mode
characteristics
• Non-equlibrium supersaturation
• Crystallite does not maintain equilibrium shape
(with crystal facets) due to kinetic reasons
• At percolation, film mostly continuous
• Film thickness not increased until most channels
are filled – (Ostwald ripening or similar)
• If grain size preserved columnar growth,
otherwise, increase in lateral size of grains due
to recrystallization
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Frank-van der Merwe and Stranski-
Krastanov mode characteristics
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Intrinsic stress
Mechanisms of intrinsic stress in
Volmer Weber growth mode
Recrystallization processes
• self diffusion allows reorganization of
disordered areas
• grains become larger (no new material added)
• tension increases a small amount as grain
boundaries are closed3,7
• due to smaller grain boundary area, as the
grain boundaries shrink, the tension between
surviving grain boundaries tends to increase.
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Intrinsic stress
Mechanisms of intrinsic stress in
Volmer Weber growth mode
Lattice expansion mechanism
Growing droplet
Lattice expands as drop grows
Capillarity stress
Weak adhesion allows gliding to relieve strain – Grains press against each other creating compression
until they contact each other…
See Koch paper for more details and references on lattice expansion 15
Mechanisms of intrinsic stress in
Volmer Weber growth mode
• Impurities
– Mostly oxygen and water
– High dep rate and good vacuum to maintain “pure”
film, especially for more reactive elements.
• misfit stress
– Lattice mismatch in epitaxy, limits film thickness if a
pseudomorphic interface is desired
• solid state reactions and/or interdiffusion
– Reaction products can change volume at interface
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Intrinsic stress
Structure-property relationship
Post-coalescence (> ~8 Å) –
compression from capillarity stress
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Mechanisms of intrinsic stress in
Volmer Weber growth mode
Evaporated films in UHV
tensile
tensile compressive
Much
smaller scale
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Intrinsic stress
Mechanisms of intrinsic stress in
Volmer Weber growth mode
Influence of substrate temperature
Influence of O2 partial pressure
Cu film force vs. film thickness and time
Cr deposited in
Deposited in UHV at
UHV onto
300K onto MgF2
MgF2 coated
coated glass. O2
glass
pressure in mbars.
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Control of intrinsic stress by
impact energy
At low impact energies, film is not fully densified
(porous) tensile due to grain stretching
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Intrinsic stress
Structure Zone Model (SZM)
Zone 1 – little or no adatom diffusion; morphology
influenced by substrate roughness, has open boundaries
and is rather porous, with increasing porosity with
increasing pressure.
Zone T – Transitional region; fibrous structure,
limiting case of zone 1 structures with infinitely
smooth substrates
Zone 2 – surface diffusion controlled
growth, columnar crystals are roughly the
same size1,2
Zone 3 – bulk diffusion1,2
Holes in zone 1 between ~3-10, and 20-30 not explained. Presumably due to lack of data in that
region?
1 micron = 1 milliTorr 21
Effect of impurities
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Summary
• PVD produces Volmer-Weber growth at low substrate temperatures.
• Interaction of grains, grain boundaries produce stress.
• Stress modulated by grain nucleation density
• Grain nucleation density is a function of process parameters.
• Surface mobility is a function of the melting point of metal, substrate
temperature, partial pressure
• Higher substrate temperatures promote larger grain growth
• Operational parameters are interchangeable 1,6
– E.g. using lower melting point metals ~ increase substrate temp.
– E.g. Impurities during deposition ~ decrease in substrate temp.
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References
1. John A. Thornton, “High Rate Thick Film growth”, Ann Rev. Mater. Sci. 1977, 7:239-60
2. Norbert Kaiser, Review of the fundamentals of thin film growth, Applied Optics, 1 June 2002 Vol
41, No 16, p 3053
3. R. Koch, J.Phys. Condens. Matter 6 (1994) 9519-9550
4. Carl V. Thompson, The origin and control of residual stress in polycrystalline films for applications
in microsystems, Slides (2004)
5. Y. Pauleau, Generation and evolution of residual stresses in physical vapour-deposited thin films,
Vacuum 61 (2001) 175-181
6. H. Windischmann, intrinsic stress in sputtered thin films, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 9 (4), Jul/Aug
1991, p. 2431
7. Milton Ohring, The Materials Science of thin films, Academic Press 1992
8. Abermann et al.(see reference 3)
9. Barna at al., (see reference 3)
Other useful references:
• P.S. Alexopolous, and T.C. Sullivan, Mechanical properties of thin films, Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci.
1990, 20:391-420
• Jerrold A Floro, Eric Chason, Robert C. Cammarata, and David J. Srolovitz, Physical Origins of
intrisic stresses in volmer weber thin films, MRS bulletin, Jan 2002 p 19
• Brian W. Sheldon, Ashok Rajamani, Abhinav Bhandari, Eric Chason, S.K. Hong, R. Beresford,
Competition between tensile and compressive stress mechanisms during Volmer Weber growth of
aluminum nitride films, Journal of Applied Physics 98, 043509 (2005)
• Erik Klkholm, Delamination and fracture of thin films, IBM J. Res Develop. Vol 31 No 5, Sept 1987
• Frederik Claeyssens, Ph.D. Thesis, Fundamental studies of pulsed laser ablation, 2001, Dept of
chemistry, University of Bristol, UK, http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/pt/diamond/fredthesis/
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