Structures of co-evaporated copper alloys

Nanostructure and mechanical behavior of metastable Cu–Cr thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy

“…In contrast to Ref. [13], Kim and Yee [44] found that co-evaporated Cu 50 Cr 50 alloy films remained stable during deposition at much higher substrate temperatures, indicating that higher Cr concentrations increase film stability. The phase decomposition only began to occur when the substrate temperature was in the range of 275°C, which is still $100°C higher compared to the maximum substrate temperatures that were reached in this study.…”

“…If one compares the growth stability of sputter-deposited [13] and evaporated Cu-Cr films (Ref. [44] and this study), it seems that thermal evaporation at elevated substrate temperatures is more suitable for obtaining films trapped in a metastable condition when compared to sputter deposition. A possible explanation for that might be the intense ion bombardment during sputtering which adds to and increases energy and mobility of the condensed adatoms during film nucleation [49,50], favoring the decomposition of the metastable films.…”

“…This high stability of Cu-Cr alloys during post-annealing was also observed in Refs. [44,28]. One has to mention that the metastable Cu-Cr alloys in the case of [28] were synthesized in bulk form via high pressure torsion.…”