Early Stages of Reaction Between Amorphous Ni-Nb and Crystalline Au Films

摘要

Thin film interactions between a-(Ni-Nb) and polycrystalline Au overlayers have been studied with high depth resolution (less than or equal to 17A) Rutherford backscattering (RBS) and TEM to obtain information on the early stages of reactions at the interface. The RBS spectra from Au indicated that the interdiffused samples consisted of two layers: an Au-Nb binary layer on the surface and a ternary Au-Ni-Nb compound layer beneath the binary layer. This growth kinetics of the ternary compound later differed for unrelaxed samples and samples which had been relaxed prior to Au deposition. Cross-section TEM showed that relaxed and unrelaxed samples exhibit different microstructures. We interpret this result to indicate that the reaction stages in the relaxed samples are less advanced than those in the unrelaxed samples. (ERA citation 11:007461)