Effect of annealing and deposition of Cu atoms on Ni trench to interface formation and growth mechanisms of Cu coating

AV Pham and TH Fang and AS Tran and TH Chen, SUPERLATTICES AND MICROSTRUCTURES, 139, 106402 (2020).

DOI: 10.1016/j.spmi.2020.106402

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is used to simulate the deposition and annealing process of Cu atoms on the Ni (001) trench. The results indicate that the curvature of profile and surface roughness of the Cu layer film decrease as increasing the substrate temperature and/or incident energy. The surface roughness of the deposition Cu film is variability as increasing the incident angle from 0 degrees to 30 degrees. In the growth process, the intermixing occurs at the interface between Cu atoms and Ni trench, and the length increases as the increasing of substrate temperature and/or incident energy. These phenomena may be attributed to the enhanced atomic mobility for higher incident energy and thermal annealing. The peak-to-peak distances of g(r) clearly indicate that the crystal structure of Cu-Ni atoms after the annealing process is improved, and still FCC structure. The dislocation is formed during the deposition process and affected by the substrate temperature, as well as the incident energy. The annealing treatment reduces the residual stress in the deposited Cu layer. The formation of the vacancies appears during the deposition process. After the annealing process, the Cu-Ni atoms become more orderly in the crystal lattice, many vacancies and voids are destroyed. In addition, the surface of the Cu film layer becomes smoother.

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