Interfacial adhesion of alumina thin films over the full compositional range of ternary fcc alloy films: A combinatorial nanoindentation study

Combinatorial Materials Design Approach to Investigate Adhesion Layer Chemistry for Optimal Interfacial Adhesion Strength

“…A detailed description of the shutter system can be found in Ref. [6]. A combination of W, Cr, and Ta was used to create (3 × 3) matrices of single element and binary alloy adhesion layers with different compositions on single 2" passivated Si wafers, schematically shown in Figure 1a.…”

“…Ideally, material discovery and design efforts involve close coupling between materials prediction, synthesis, and characterization [2]. Combinatorial thin film science is one optimization method for material properties, whether they be mechanical, functional, or interfacial, using significantly fewer resources than a traditional bulk analysis technique and conducted in substantially less time [4][5][6]. The method combines high-throughput synthesis and subsequent characterization of multinary material libraries on a single wafer, allowing for screening of unique properties or the optimization of specific properties for a desired application.…”

“…The method combines high-throughput synthesis and subsequent characterization of multinary material libraries on a single wafer, allowing for screening of unique properties or the optimization of specific properties for a desired application. Regarding fabrication of such libraries, physical vapor deposition (PVD) such as magnetron sputtering with different targets is a common technique, using either co-deposition [5,[7][8][9][10][11] or wedge-deposited multilayered thickness gradients of different elements combined with post-deposition annealing treatments for alloying [3,6,12]. Thereby, programmable shutter systems incorporated into the sputter chamber allow the realization of wedge geometries [3,6,12], as well as 2D patterning of the alloys into discrete arrays, facilitating the subsequent characterization and categorization of properties based on their different chemical compositions.…”

“…This characterization of resulting material properties typically demands methods with adequate lateral resolution. It includes correlation of the chemical composition to the atomic structure and development of resulting structure-property relationships impacting e.g., formability [13], toughness [11], oxidation resistance [3] or interfacial adhesion [6]. The latter property is a critical factor for any thin film application, regardless of the specific coating application.…”

“…From the variety of methods available to measure interfacial adhesion (overview found in [14,15]) only a few fulfill the combinatorial requirements of high spatial resolution, time efficiency and quantitative results. Recently, the potential of nanoindentation induced blisters for combinatorial adhesion studies has been demonstrated by the authors [6], with some compromises on quantification of the results.…”