Disassembling glancing angle deposited films for high throughput growth scaling analysis

Glancing angle deposition (GLAD) is a thin film fabrication technique capable of creating arrays of nanocolumns from numerous materials. Optimizing these films for applications requires an understanding of their growth, prompting research into the columns’ growth scaling behaviour. Columns are generally represented with a power law, capturing broadening in an exponent p. Existing literature measurements of p are inconsistent and difficult to repeat, in part due to complex branching in many GLAD films and subjectivity in some existing techniques.;This thesis describes a new method of studying growth scaling by disassembling films into a solvent and dispersing them across a substrate, facilitating automated measurement from top-down scanning electron microscopy. Minimizing the uncertainty and subjectivity introduced by branching, optimized implementations may permit fully-automated high-throughput film characterization. Initial results track the influence of deposition rotation on broadening, presenting the first quantitative trend and potentially improving future nanostructure morphology control.