An ultra high vacuum (UHV) planar interface unit has been constructed to study the effect of interface/boundary structure and chemistry on properties. We report here initial observations of substrate morphology and chemistry prior to bonding and resulting interface morphology obtained using austenitic stainless steel.

To synthesize chemically clean planar interfaces by diffusion bonding, the substrate must be macroscopically and microscopically flat and chemically clean. Macro-flatness, necessary for bonding to occur over large areas, was ensured by conventional mechanical polishing and lapping. Substrate surfaces were cleaned by a broad (3cm) 500 eV ion beam (Ar or Xe) at 15° incidence. The resulting changes in substrate near-atomic-scale roughness and chemistry were analyzed using Auger spectroscopy (AES) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Before ion beam cleaning, the sub-strates exhibited high oxygen and carbon contamination (Fig la). Both Xe and Ar ion cleaning reduced these values; the result for 5 minutes Ar cleaning is shown in Fig lb.