The early stages of stress development during epitaxial growth of Ag/Cu multilayers

The early stages of stress development during epitaxial growth of metal layers with a large misfit in lattice parameters still need in-depth understanding. In this particular study we have focused on Ag-Cu system, which is immiscible and exhibit a large 14% misfit in lattice parameters. Ag/Cu multilayers have been grown by ultrahigh-vacuum evaporation on Si (111) maintained at −20°C, 35°C or 110°C. The thickness of the individual layers is about 100 Å. All the films present the same (111) orientation with a well defined in-plane orientation: <110> Cu or Ag // <110> Si. The stress was monitored during growth with a home-made laser curvature measurement device. The stress vs thickness behaviour is highly asymmetric when comparing Ag/Cu and Cu/Ag. Indeed Ag grown on Cu does not develop any measurable stress at any thickness or temperature, whereas Cu grows on Ag under tensile temperature and thicknessdependent stress. The temperature dependence of this stress relaxation cannot be interpreted with a standard relaxation model including dislocation motion. A possible way to understand the stress temperature dependence is to consider the evolution of microstructure during growth.