Non-monotonous dependence of surface roughness on factors influencing energy of adatoms during thin island film growth

Many experimental results show that surface roughness of thin films can increase, decrease, stay constant or pass through the minimum with the change in substrate temperature, energy of arriving atoms or assisted beam (electrons, photons, ions), depending on material and interval of variation of those parameters. The aim of this paper is to explain and analyze this non-monotonous behavior of surface roughness by proposed kinetic model. The model is based on rate equations and includes processes of surface diffusion of adatoms, nucleation, growth and coalescence of islands in the case of thin films growth in Volmer-Weber mode. It is shown by modeling that non-monotonous dependence of surface roughness on the factors influencing energy of adatoms (e.g. temperature, assisted beam irradiation, accelerating voltage) occurs as a result of interplay between diffusion length of adatoms and size of islands, because both parameters depend on energy of adatoms. Variation of island size and diffusion length results in atomic jumps from islands forming rougher or smoother surface. The functions of surface roughness, island size, island density on diffusion length of adatoms and on other parameters are calculated and analyzed in this work.     

用准对称波导法测量薄膜参数

本文指出了在棱镜耦合状态下降低平板波导基模截止厚度的途径,用文中提出的准对称波导法测量了薄的MgO膜的折射率和厚度,并给出了测量结果.     

Surface roughness characterization of Al-doped zinc oxide thin films using rapid optical measurement

Transparent conductive oxide thin films have been widely investigated in photoelectric devices such as flat panel display (FPD) and solar cells. Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films have been widely employed in FPD. Measuring the surface roughness of AZO thin films is important before the manufacturing of photoelectric device using AZO thin films because surface roughness of AZO thin films will significantly affect the performance of photoelectric device. Traditional methods to measure surface roughness of AZO thin films are scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The disadvantages of these approaches include long lead time and slow measurement speed. To solve this problem, an optical inspection system for rapid measurement of the surface roughness of AZO thin films is developed in this study. It is found that the incident angle of 60° is a good candidate to measure the surface roughness of AZO thin films. Based on the trend equation y=−3.6483x+2.1409, the surface roughness of AZO thin films (y) can be directly deduced from the peak power density (x) using the optical inspection system developed. The maximum measurement-error rate of the optical inspection system developed is less than 8.7%.The saving in inspection time of the surface roughness of AZO thin films is up to 83%.     

光学薄膜表面复型电子显微照片的计算机处理

用计算机处理薄膜表面复型电子显微照片,得到表面高度轮廓,提出了计算机定标方法,并计算了薄膜表面微结构参量.     

Experimental investigation of segmented adaptive optics for spatial laser array in an atmospheric turbulence condition

We describe a concept of using segmented adaptive optics (AO) to correct the higher-order wavefront aberrations (HOWAs) in an atmospheric turbulence condition. The effects of piston and tip-tilt corrections are analyzed by numerical simulation. An experiment test-bed is built for verification. Seven spatial beamlets are combined into a hexagonal array by use of a pyramid, and an active segmented mirror is used for phase modulation. The AO control is implemented by stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm. Experimentally, after segmented AO is enabled, the HOWA in warmed air environment has been effectively corrected and the peak intensity of far-field has been enhanced by 5 times.     

Anomalous scaling in surface roughness evaluation of electrodeposited nanocrystalline Pt thin films

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is used to measure the surface roughness of crystalline Pt thin films as a function of film thickness and growth rate. Our films were electrodeposited on Au/Cr/glass substrates, under galvanostatic control (constant current density), from a single electrolyte containing Pt⁴⁺ ions. Crystalline structure of the films was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. The effect of growth rate (deposition current density) and film thickness (deposition time) on the kinetic roughening of the films were studied using AFM and roughness calculation. The data is consistent with a rather complex behaviour known as “anomalous scaling” where both local and large scale roughnesses show power law dependence on the film thickness.     

基体对应力诱导的纳米晶W膜开裂行为的影响

采用磁控溅射方法同时在Si(100)和聚酰亚胺(PI)基体上沉积W膜,对比研究不同基体约束对纳米晶W膜微观结构及应力诱导的开裂行为的影响.结果发现,在两种基体上W膜的裂纹形态明显不同.在Si基体上W膜的裂纹呈楔形,而在PI基体上W膜的裂纹呈半圆柱形凸起于薄膜表面.这种裂纹形态的差异源于两种基体上W膜的变形机理不同.在刚性Si基体上,W膜的裂纹扩展是通过晶粒平面内的转动实现的,而在柔性PI基体上W膜裂纹扩展是通过排列晶粒在平面内、外的转动协调完成的.分析表明,两种截然不同的开裂行为与不同基体上薄膜内应力的变 关键词： W膜 残余应力 裂纹 晶粒     

相位不连续点对自适应光学的影响

 分析了激光在湍流大气中传输时，若光束波前中出现相位不连续点，自适应光学校正能力降低的原因，通过数值模拟计算了当光束波前中出现相位不连续点时对自适应光学校正的影响，表明在传输过程中出现不连续点的情况下，为了提高自适应光学的校正能力，必须要考虑不连续相位的影响。     

Roughness measurement of metals using a modified binary speckle image and adaptive optics

This paper proposes an integrated roughness measurement system that is based on adaptive optics (AO) and binary analysis of speckle pattern images. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the necessity for AO compensation in regions containing both heat and fluid flow turbulences. A speckle image was obtained by projecting a laser beam onto the specimen surface, and the laser pattern image reflected from the surface was binarized to experimentally correlate the intensity with the surface roughness. In the absence of the AO correction scheme, induced turbulences can severely increase the residual rms error from 0.14 to 1.4 μm. After a real-time closed-loop AO correction, we can reduce the wavefront root mean square (rms) error to 0.12 μm, which not only compensates for the aberration error from induced disturbances but also improves the overall performance of the optical system. In addition, an AO system having different gains was investigated, and a threshold gain value was found to be able to steadily compensate for the wavefront errors in less than 2 s. Measurement results of five steel samples having roughness ranging from 0.2 to 3.125 μm (0.3λ and 5λ, where λ is the diode laser wavelength) demonstrate an excellent correlation between the intensity distribution of binary images and average roughness with a correlation coefficient of 0.9982. Furthermore, the proposed AO-assisted system is in good agreement with the stylus method and less than 9.73% error values can be consistently obtained.     

Performance simulation of an adaptive optics system with liquid crystal corrector under closed-loop and open-loop control

The adaptive optics system (AOS) often operates in a discrete sampling process with finite closed-loop frequency. Reconstruction, detection, and time lag induced errors are the main correction errors of the system. An AOS that is based on a liquid crystal (LC) benefits from the LC’s high correction precision, thus the reconstruction error can be ignored. The primary error will be induced by the time lag from the time of detection to the time of compensation. In this paper, some theoretical simulations are introduced in order to evaluate the correction precision of AOS with an LC corrector. The main purpose is to compare the correction precision between the open-loop and closed-loop control. We attempt to find a method to ascertain the exact precision of the open-loop control and show whether it improves the correction precision. The conclusion is thus reached that the actual error rejection bandwidth for the closed-loop was lower than the −3 dB error rejection bandwidth measured in practice. The increased refresh frequency of the open-loop control can improve the imaging performance to nearly −3 dB bandwidth of the detector measured, which is the maximum possible bandwidth due to the time lag.     

Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of thin film growth

A three-dimensional kinetic Monte Carlo technique has been developed for simulating growth of thin Cu films. The model involves incident atom attachment, diffusion of the atoms on the growing surface, and detachment of the atoms from the growing surface. The related effect by surface atom diffusion was taken into account. A great improvement was made on calculation of the activation energy for atom diffusion based on a reasonable assumtion of interaction potential between atoms. The surface roughness and the relative density of the films were simulated as the functions of growth substrate temperature and film thickness. The results showed that there exists an optimum growth temperatureT _opt at a given deposition rate. When the substrate temperature approaches toT _opt, the growing surface becomes smoothing and the relative density of the films increases. The surface roughness minimizes and the relative density saturates atT _opt. The surface roughness increases with an increment of substrate, temperature when the temperature is higher thanT _opt.T _opt is a function of the deposition rate and the influence of the deposition rate on the surface roughness depends on the substrate temperatures. The simulation results also showed that the relative density decreases with the increasing of the deposition rate and the average thickness of the film.     

Nano-structured Fe thin film deposition using plasma focus device

This paper reports the deposition of nano-structured Fe thin films using 3.3 kJ Mather-type plasma focus. The conventional hollow copper anode was replaced by anode fitted with solid Fe top and the deposition was done using different numbers of deposition shots at two different angular positions. Scanning Electron Microscopy shows that the size of nano-phase agglomerate is smaller when the sample is deposited using either lesser number of deposition shots or at higher angular position with respect to anode axis. X-ray Diffraction shows that crystal structure characteristics change with increase in number of deposition shots. Measurements of magnetic properties using Vibrating Sample Magnetometer identify intermediate magnetization and coercivity in Fe thin films deposited at smaller angular position with respect to anode axis. It is concluded that the morphological, structural and magnetic characteristics of Fe thin films deposited using plasma focus device depend not only on the number of focus deposition shots but also on the angular position of the sample.     

Preparation of thin Si:H films in an inductively coupled plasma reactor and analysis of their surface roughness

An important concern in the deposition of Si:H films is to obtain smooth surfaces. Herein, we deposit the thin Si:H films using Ar-diluted SiH₄ as feedstock gas in an inductively coupled plasma reactor. And we carry a real-time monitor on the deposition process by using optical emission spectrum technology in the vicinity of substrate and diagnose the Ar plasma radial distribution by Langmuir probe. Surface detecting by AFM and surface profilometry in large scale shows that the thin Si:H films have small surface roughness. Distributions of both the ion density and the electron temperature are homogeneous at h = 0.5 cm. Based on these experimental results, it can be proposed inductively coupled plasma reactor is fit to deposit the thin film in large scale. Also, Ar can affect the reaction process and improve the thin Si:H films characteristics.     

自适应光学系统测试中大气湍流的时域模拟

建立了大气湍流模拟的时域模型,用于在自适应光学系统的测试中模拟大气湍流的时域变化。讨论了时域模型下随机相位屏平滑帧数和刷新频率与平均风速的关系。结果表明：对表征随机波前的随机相位屏进行时域平滑可使随机波前的变化更符合大气湍流对入射波前连续平滑渐变的影响;随机相位屏的平滑帧数仅与系统口径和大气相干长度相关,而与风速无关;随机相位屏的刷新频率与平均风速成正比,平滑后的刷新频率还与平滑帧数成正比。最后,构造了一套大气湍流模拟装置,应用功率谱分析法对时域模型的有效性进行了验证。     

Coherent beam combination of an optical array using adaptive fiber optics collimators

A novel adaptive-fiber-optics-collimator (AFOC) compensating both piston-type and tip/tilt-type phase errors of output beam is introduced, and has been employed in experiments of coherent beam combination (CBC) of a delta distributed fiber array. Feedback control is realized using stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm. Excellent CBC effect has been achieved when piston and tip/tilt errors among beamlets corrected. The necessity of wavefront tip/tilt control in CBC is verified. Experimental results exhibit great potential applications of this kind of AFOC in fiber amplifier arrays.     

Investigation of interface roughness cross-correlation properties of optical thin films from total scattering losses

The interface roughness and interface roughness cross-correlation properties affect the scattering losses of high-quality optical thin films. In this paper, the theoretical models of light scattering induced by surface and interface roughness of optical thin films are concisely presented. Furthermore, influence of interface roughness cross-correlation properties to light scattering is analyzed by total scattering losses. Moreover, single-layer TiO₂ thin film thickness, substrate roughness of K9 glass and ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) technique effect on interface roughness cross-correlation properties are studied by experiments, respectively. A 17-layer dielectric quarter-wave high reflection multilayer is analyzed by total scattering losses. The results show that the interface roughness cross-correlation properties depend on TiO₂ thin film thickness, substrate roughness and deposition technique. The interface roughness cross-correlation properties decrease with the increase of film thickness or the decrease of substrates roughness. Furthermore, ion beam assisted deposition technique can increase the interface roughness cross-correlation properties of optical thin films. The measured total scattering losses of 17-layer dielectric quarter-wave high reflection multilayer deposited with IBAD indicate that completely correlated interface model can be observed, when substrate roughness is about 2.84 nm.     

Ultrawide frequency linewidth of the permeability spectra of FeCoN thin film sputtered on the flexible substrate

Analysis shows that it is possible to make use of dispersed magnetic ripple fields to obtain a wide frequency linewidth of permeability spectra of soft magnetic thin films. As-sputtered FeCoN thin film sputtered on flexible Kapton substrate is studied as an example. It has ultrawide frequency linewidths of its resonance peaks in the permeability spectra, compared to its counterpart deposited on Si substrate. The frequency linewidth of FeCoN on Kapton substrate decreases with external magnetic field, showing a different field dependence from that of FeCoN on Si substrate. The ultrawide frequency linewidth and its decrease with external magnetic field are ascribed to the dispersed magnetic ripple fields caused by the flexible substrate. This work shows that the flexible substrate is effective in obtaining a wide frequency linewidth of the permeability spectra of soft magnetic thin films.     

二氧化锆薄膜表面粗糙度的研究

采用电子束蒸发工艺,利用泰勒霍普森相关相干表面轮廓粗糙度仪,研究了不同基底粗糙度、不同二氧化锆薄膜厚度以及不同的离子束辅助能量下所沉积的二氧化锆薄膜的表面粗糙度。结果表明：随着基底表面粗糙度的增加,二氧化锆薄膜表面粗糙度呈现出先缓慢增加,当基底的粗糙度大于10nm后呈现快速增加的趋势;随着二氧化锆薄膜厚度的增加,其表面均方根粗糙度（RMS）先减小后增大;随着辅助沉积离子能量的增加,其表面粗糙度呈现出先减小后增加的趋势。     

自适应光学系统中大气湍流的模型分析与计算机仿真

由于自适应光学系统的实现成本很高,所以利用电子计算机进行系统仿真,把它作为一种行之有效的研究方式已被大量应用。讨论了在自适应光学系统计算机仿真中,大气湍流形成畸变波前过程的仿真模型,提出了利用Kol mogorov功率谱算法构造畸变波前的方法。