Microstucture Control Of Al-Cu-Fe Thin Films And Their Erformance Analysis

Al-Cu-Fe thin films have many attractive performances, such as low electrical andthermal conductivity, high hardness, low friction coefficient and well antioxidant proper-ties as well as the materials of Al-Cu-Fe are cheap and easy to get. Recently, there are lotsof reports of the microstructure and properties about Al-Cu-Fe thin films, but the growthmechanism are not consummate. Deposited Al-Cu-Fe thin films by external magnetic fieldhaven’t been researched now.Using Si <111> as substrates, prepared Al-Cu-Fe thin films with additional magneticfield to control the composite、microstructure and performances. The main methods werecontrolling of magnetic strength and sputtering power and time, and discussed the growthmechanism of Al-Cu-Fe thin films under different deposit processes. After Al-Cu-Fe thinfilms were prepared, we used post annealing processes to control the thin films’ phasetransformation. The influence of annealing temperatures and time to Al-Cu-Fe thin films’phase transformation were studied. Analysis Al-Cu-Fe thin films’ microstructure and forceperformance by X-ray diffraction、Scanning Electron Microscope、 Energy DisperseSpectroscopy、Atomic Force Microscope and Nick instrument. Main conclusions are asfollows:Preparing Al-Cu-Fe thin films at additional magnetic field, we can draw the followingconclusions:(1) With the increase of magnetic field intensity, lower Al content in film, Cu, Fecontent increase; Under the same magnetic field intensity, as the increase of sputteringpower, Cu and Fe content increase, Cu from10.61%to13.09%, Fe from10.61%to13.09%; Cu levels drop from60.38%to54.34;(2) The main phases are Al4Cu9and Al2Cu of the thin films which were deposited atdifferent magnetic intensities. The phase structure of thin film has a slight change with theincrease of magnetic field intensity. But the change was not obvious due to low substrate temperature;(3) With increasing of magnetic intensity, Al-Cu-Fe thin films grain refinement andsurface roughness increased. The average grain size refined from24.6nm to22.2nm, theadhesion and roughness were increased, while the friction coefficient was decrease;(4) Annealing after4h under600℃, the composition of membrane mainly forβ-AlCu(Fe) and ω-Al7Cu2Fe phase, annealing at800℃with I-QC phase formation, withthe increase of temperature β-AlCu(Fe) content reduce, ω-Al7Cu2Fe phase content in-creases;(5) With the increase of annealing temperature and heat preservation time, the averageparticle size of the Al-Cu-Fe thin films increase, the surface roughness also increase;(6) The adhesion strength between substrate and the thin films was increased as therise of annealing temperature. Without magnetic field of the preparation of the adhesionstrength of the film with the increase of annealing temperature, first increases then de-creases;(7) The thin films prepared under the additional magnetic field of0.3T, after600℃annealing4h, the adhesion between thin film and substrate was7n, and the friction coeffi-cient was0.025.The comprehensive performance of thin film under is better under thisproces.