Surface morphological evolution during annealing of epitaxial Cu(001) layers
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180 (United States)
Single crystal Cu(001) layers were grown on MgO(001) by ultrahigh vacuum magnetron sputtering at T{sub s}=100 deg. C. Quantitative surface morphological analyses by in situ scanning tunneling microscopy show that the surfaces exhibit self-affine mound structures with a scaling exponent of 0.82{+-}0.03 and a mound radius r{sub c} that increases from 31{+-}8 to 39{+-}6 nm for increasing layer thickness t=24-120 nm. In situ annealing at 200 and 300 deg. C leads to a thermodynamically driven mass transport that minimizes the surface step density, resulting in broader mounds and a smaller root mean square surface roughness {sigma}. This effect is most pronounced for t=24 nm, for which r{sub c} increases from 31{+-}8 to 70{+-}20 nm and {sigma} decreases from 1.3{+-}0.1 to 0.74{+-}0.08 nm, resulting in a decrease in the average surface slope from {chi}=7 deg. to 2 deg. and an increase in the average terrace width w{sub T} by more than a factor of 4. In contrast, w{sub T} increases by only 20% for t=120 nm. This remarkable difference between 'thin' and 'thick' layers is attributed to diverging surface morphological pathways during annealing: The strong smoothening for t=24 nm is due to a competitive coalescence process where some mounds grow laterally at the expense of their smaller neighbors, which die out. In contrast, the initially wider mounds of thicker layers (t=120 nm) combine to form a quasistable surface morphology that exhibits anisotropic mound structures, which limit mass transport and stabilize the surface step density.
- OSTI ID:
- 21137456
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 104, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2968440; (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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