Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
Recognition of the importance of the mechanical properties of thin deposited films has received increasing attention over the past decade. The film or near surface region must be treated as a material to understand its particular mechanical properties in terms of the unique microstructure present. A vapor condensed film often has an extremely small grain size and gives brittle behavior. It is not uncommon to form an impurity stabilized amorphous film during growth.
In this paper emphasis is placed on concepts and recent instrumentation for measurements of the stress during film deposition. This growth stress and its distribution results from the microstructure plus the mechanical constraints of the underlying material, and may be modified by the processing. Both elastic and plastic components are present and local deformation maps allow a reasonable level of modelling. Lacking in this approach are experimental material parameters for the film, near surface, or interfacial material. New data for the tensile properties of cast polystyrene and SiO films is presented.