Copper thin film of alternating textures

It is common for thin films to have a predominant texture, but not alternating textures. In this letter, we report a copper film of alternating textures through self-organization. Using dc magnetron sputtering technique, we deposit copper films on a SiO2/Si(111) substrate. A thin layer of copper of [111] texture is first developed, and another thin layer of [110] ensued. As deposition continues, a third layer of copper of [111] texture is formed on the top, leading to a sandwich copper thin film of alternating [111] and [110] textures. The film morphology is characterized with scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy and the texture with x-ray diffraction. Based on anisotropic elastic analyses and molecular dynamics simulations, we propose a model of texture evolution during the formation of multilayers, attributing the texture evolution to the competition of surface and strain energies. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.