No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
We report on the formation of nanocrystalline Al thin films (180 nm thick) via magnetron sputtering technique using a step-wise deposition concept where columnar growth is inhibited, giving place to the development of a nanocrystalline mosaic grain arrangement with characteristic diameters of ≈ 30 nm and small size dispersion. The thermal evolution of the grain size distributions is investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in samples annealed in high vacuum for 3600 s. For the temperature range 300 ≤ T ≤ 462 °C the system presents a 3-D regular growth behavior up to sizes ≈ 70 nm. For T = 475 °C a rather sharp transition from normal to abnormal grain growth occurs. The grains extend to the film thickness and present mean lateral dimensions of ≈ 1000 nm. The observed phenomenon is discussed in terms of a synergetic grain boundary mobility effect caused by the characteristics of the initial nanogranular grain boundary morphology.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.