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Anomalous Grain Growth in Sputtered CoCrMn Thin Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Hajung Song
Affiliation:
Nano Device Research Center, Future Technology Research Division, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, 130-650, Korea
Soon-Ju Kwon
Affiliation:
Nano Device Research Center, Future Technology Research Division, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, 130-650, Korea
Kyung-Ho Shin
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Kyungbuk, 790-784, Korea
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Abstract

This paper presents anomalous grain growth in sputtered hcp CoCrMn thin films: The grain size is about 250 nm wide and a few micrometers long in the film of only 50 nm thickness. Both selected area diffraction (SAD) and x-ray texture analysis indicate that the perpendicular direction to the substrate is parallel to the zone axis of hcp<100> and hcp<110>. SAD also indicates that short axis of elongated grains is the c-axis of hcp structure, i.e. grains are elongated in the orthogonal direction to the c-axis. In addition, these elongated grains compose a grain bunch, in which grains are parallel to each other. Phi (φ) scan at grazing incidence x-ray diffraction (GID) geometry reveals that bunches are, as a whole, randomly oriented. However, neighboring bunches are misoriented about 10-20 degrees with each other, which is consistent with TEM observation. Such an anomalous grain growth of CoCrMn thin film is explained in views of mechanisms of nucleation and surface energy minimization.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2002

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