Study On Amorphous Zr₅₅Al₁₀Ni₅Cu₃₀ Thin Films Prepared By Magnetron Sputtering And Properties

As we know,the atomic linkage in amorphous alloy thin films is strong and some even stronger than crystal alloy.What's more,the atomic arrangement of amorphous alloy exhibits a short range order but long range disorder resorting in none of defect such as grain boundary,dislocation and so on.Because of these structure characteristics,the amorphous alloy shows more excellent properties than atomic alloy such as higher strength,hardness,wear resistance,corrosion resistance,magnetism and bio-compatibility,thus been preferred by us all.Magnetron sputtering is one of the most maturity and effective method to prepare thin films for its simple operation,efficient,uniform film forming and low temperature.So we chose this method to prepare amorphous alloy thin films.The Zr₅₅Al₁₀Ni₅Cu₃₀alloy which has a high amorphous forming ability was selected as target,and D36 steel as the substrate.The top-view and cross-section surface morphologies of the as-deposited samples were analyzed by using scanning electron microscope(SEM).The phase structure was confirmed by using X-ray diffraction(XRD).The surface roughness was ascertained by atomic force microscope(AFM).The surface hardness was determined by using Microscopy/Vickers hardness tester.The nano scratch tester and test were employed to reveal the adhesion and scratch properties.Corrosion behavior of the films was investigated in 3.5%Na Cl aqueous solutions.The XRD results say that all the samples deposited under different parameters are amorphous and prove a crystallization tendency with the longer deposition time,higher power and substrate temperature due to the metastability of the amorphous state.The SEM images exhibit the film is formed by the accumlation of some irregular spherical particles.And the particle size becomes bigger along with longer deposition time,higher power and substrate temperature,which is the same tendency as the surface roughness.The morphologies of the cross-section are mainly influenced by argon pressure and present a change from smooth to columnar.And the thickness of the thin film deposited by section is agree with the deposition time.The properties of all the films prepared under different parameters were studied.The micro-hardness of all the samples are higher than the substrate,the hardness gets higher when the deposition time get longer and the power get higher.The nano scratch test has been performed on the samples deposited under different power and substrate temperatures.The scratch curves exhibit that the critical load gets bigger as the temperature and power goes up,which mean the growing bonding strength between film and substrate.Reasonable explanation for this phenomenon maybe that the higher power and temperature make the atom diffuse deeper into the substrate so resulting a higher adhesion.The corrosion resistance was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy(EIS),and the results indicate a better corrosion resistance with higher deposition power and longer deposition time.