Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SD5-O004
IN-SITU STUDY OF THE DEWETTING BEHAVIOR OF Au/Ni BILAYER
FILMS
Klaus Van Benthem 1
1 University of California, Davis, Materials Science and Engineering, United States.
Solid state dewetting describes the break-up of kinetically constrained thin solid
films at elevated temperatures. The driving force for this process, which is often
referred to as thin film agglomeration, is the minimization of the total free
energy of film and substrate free surface and film-substrate interface, including
consideration of potential inter-diffusion and solid-state reactions. Dewetting
transitions of bilayer films are expected to be strongly affected by the interaction
between the different components. In this study, the agglomeration of Au/Ni
bilayer films supported by SiO 2 /Si substrates was studied by cross-sectional in
situ TEM heating experiments. The observations reveal some inter-diffusion and
alloying across the Au/Ni interface, which is driven by relatively high interfacial
stressresulting from the local lattice mismatch. Experimental observations,
including heterogeneous dewetting behavior, and the preferential formation of
Au/SiO2 interfaces will be discussed. In addition, a cross-sectional TEM specimen
preparation technique for in-situ heating experiments will be proposed and
discussed.
Acknowledgment:
This study was financially supported by a Faculty Early Career award from the
US National Science Foundation (DMR-0955638). We further acknowledge
access to the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory that is supported by the US Department of Energy under
contract No.DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Keywords: dewetting, STEM, thin films
Presenting authors email: benthem@ucdavis.edu