Thin film/substrate systems featuring arbitrary film thickness and misfit strain distributions. Part II: Experimental validation of the non-local stress/curvature relations

The classical Stoney formula relating local equibiaxial film stress to local equibiaxial substrate curvature is not well equipped to handle realistic cases where the film misfit strain, the plate system curvature, and the film thickness and resulting film stress vary with in-plane position. In Part I of this work we have extended the Stoney formula to cover arbitrarily non-uniform film thickness for a thin film/substrate system subject to non-uniform, isotropic misfit strains. The film stresses are found to depend non-locally on system curvatures. In Part II we have designed a demanding experiment whose purpose is to validate the new analysis for the case of radially symmetric deformations. To achieve this, a circular film island with sharp edges and a radially variable, but known, thickness is deposited on the wafer center. The plate system’s curvatures and the film stress distribution are independently measured by using white beam and monochromatic X-ray microdiffraction (μXRD) measurements, respectively. The measured stress field (from monochromatic μXRD) is compared to the predictions of various stress/curvature analyses, all of which have the white beam μXRD measurements as input. The results reveal the shortcomings of the “local” Stoney approach and validate the accuracy of the new “non-local” relation, most notably near the film island edges where stress concentrations dominate.     

Non-uniform, axisymmetric misfit strain： in thin films bonded on plate substrates/substrate systems： the relation between non-uniform film stresses and system curvatures

Current methodologies used for the inference of thin film stress through curvature measurements are strictly restricted to stress and curvature states which are assumed to remain uniform over the entire film/substrate system. By considering a circular thin film/substrate system subject to non-uniform, but axisymmetric misfit strain distributions in the thin film, we derived relations between the film stresses and the misfit strain, and between the plate system’s curvatures and the misfit strain. These relations feature a ‘‘local’’ part which involves a direct dependence of the stress or curvature components on the misfit strain at the same point, and a ‘‘non-local’’ part which reflects the effect of misfit strain of other points on the location of scrutiny. Most notably, we also derived relations between the polar components of the film stress and those of system curvatures which allow for the experimental inference of such stresses from full-field curvature measurements in the presence of arbitrary radial non-uniformities. These relations also feature a ‘‘non-local’’ dependence on curvatures making a full-field measurement a necessity. Finally, it is shown that the interfacial shear tractions between the film and the substrate are proportional to the radial gradients of the first curvature invariant and can also be inferred experimentally.     

Analysis of vertical cracking phenomena in tensile-strained epitaxial film on a substrate: Part I. Mathematical formulation

This paper presents an analysis of a single vertical crack and periodically distributed vertical cracks in an epitaxial film on a semi-infinite substrate where the cracks penetrate into the substrate. The film and substrate materials have different anisotropic elastic constants, necessitating Stroh formalism in the analysis. The misfit strain due to the lattice mismatch between the film and the substrate serves as the driving force for crack formation. The solution for a dislocation in an anisotropic trimaterial is used as a Green function, so that the cracks are modeled as the continuous distributions of dislocations to yield the singular integral equations of Cauchy-type. The Gauss–Chebyshev quadrature formula is adopted to solve the singular integral equations numerically. Energy arguments provide the critical condition for crack formation, at which the cracks are energetically favorable configurations, in terms of the ratio of the penetration depth into the substrate to the film thickness, the ratio of the spacing of the periodic cracks to the film thickness, and the generalized Dundurs parameters between the film and substrate materials.     

Planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) measurements of liquid film thickness in annular flow. Part I: Methods and data

Most approaches to the modeling of annular flow require information regarding the thin liquid film surrounding the central gas core. This film is hypothesized to present a rough surface to the gas core, enhancing interfacial shear and pressure loss, with the roughness closely linked to the height of the film. This height is typically obtained from conductance probe measurements. The present work used planar laser-induced fluorescence to provide direct visualization of the liquid film in upward vertical air–water annular flow. Images were processed to produce the distribution of film heights. The standard deviation and average film thickness are found to be an increasing function of liquid flow and a decreasing function of gas flow, with the standard deviation approaching 0.4 times the average at sufficient liquid flow.     

Planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) measurements of liquid film thickness in annular flow. Part II: Analysis and comparison to models

Film thickness distributions in upward vertical air–water annular flow have been determined using planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF). Film thickness data are frequently used to estimate interfacial shear and pressure loss. This film roughness concept has been used in a number of models for annular flow of varying complexity. The PLIF data are presently applied to the single-zone interfacial shear correlation of Wallis; the more detailed model of Owen and Hewitt; and the two-zone (base film and waves) model of Hurlburt, Fore, and Bauer. For the present data, these models all under-predict the importance of increasing liquid flow on pressure loss and interfacial shear. Since high liquid flow rates in annular flow induce disturbance wave and entrainment activity, further modeling in these areas is advised.     

The stress concentration near a rigid line inclusion in a prestressed, elastic material. Part I.: Full-field solution and asymptotics

A lamellar (zero-thickness) rigid inclusion, so-called ‘stiffener’, is considered embedded in a uniformly prestressed (or prestrained), incompressible and orthotropic elastic sheet, subject to a homogeneous far-field deformation increment. This problem is solved under the assumption of plane strain deformation, with prestress principal directions and orthotropy axes aligned with the stiffener. A full-field solution is obtained solving the Riemann-Hilbert problem for symmetric incremental loading at infinity (while for shear deformation the stiffener leaves the ambient field unperturbed). In addition to the full-field solution, the asymptotic Mode I near-tip representation involving the corresponding incremental stress intensity factor are derived and these results are complemented with the Mode II asymptotic solution. For null prestress, the full-field stress state is shown to match correctly with photoelastic experiments performed by us (on two-part epoxy resin samples containing an aluminum lamina). Our experiments also confirm the fracture patterns for a brittle material containing a stiffener, which do not obey a hoop-stress criterion and result completely different from those found for cracks. Issues related to shear band formation and evaluation of energy release rate for a stiffener growth (or reduction) are deferred to Part II of this article.     

Internal wave reflections and transmissions arising from a non-uniform mesh. Part I: An analysis for the Crank–Nicolson linear finite element scheme

This is the first of a series of three related papers dealing with some of the consequences of non-uniform meshes in a numerical model. In this paper the accuracy of the Crank–Nicolson linear finite element scheme, which is applied to the linear shallow water equations, is examined in the context of a single abrupt change in nodal spacing. The (in)accuracy is quantified in terms of reflection and transmission coefficients. An incident wave impinging on the interface between two regions with different nodal spacings is shown to give rise to no reflected waves and two transmitted waves. The analysis is verified using three different wavelengths (2Δx, 4Δx 8Δx) in three ‘hot-start’ numerical experiments with a mesh expansion factor of 2 and three experiments with a mesh contraction factor of 1/2. An energy flux analysis based on the concept of group velocity shows that energy is conserved across the interface.