Title: Morphological Evolution of Alloy Thin Films
Speaker: Professor P. Voorhees
Speaker Info: Northwestern
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:
Lattice mismatched films are becoming increasingly important in a wide range of applications. Here we examine the morphological stability and subsequent evolution of an alloy film during growth. Linear stability calculations are performed to determine the conditions under which a growing film will remain planar. The theory accounts for the effects of deposition and the stress generated by both compositional inhomogeneities and the misfit between the film and substrate. The analysis shows that the system can be unstable to both steady and oscillatory instabilities. In addition, for certain materials parameters there is a unique wavenumber at the onset of the instability, implying that nonlinear small amplitude solutions may be possible. An introduction to thin film deposition using lattice mismatched systems along with experimental results will also be given.Date: Friday, January 22, 1999