Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ multilayers have been deposited on Si(100) substrates by reactive pulsed laser deposition technique. The experiments were performed at an optimized oxygen partial pressure of 3x10^-2 mbar at room temperature. A nanolaminate structure consisting of alternate layers of ZrO₂ and Al₂O₃ with 40 bi-layers were fabricated with thickness of each layer of zirconia and alumina of 15 nm and 5 nm, respectively. The cross-sectional transmission electron microscope (XTEM) investigations were carried out on a multilayer thin film deposited at room temperature. The XTEM study shows the formation of uniform thickness, higher fraction of monoclinic and small fraction of tetragonal phases of zirconia and amorphous alumina. The ZrO₂ /Al₂O₃ multilayer film was characterized using high temperature x-ray diffraction (HTXRD) in the temperature range RT-1473 K. The ZrO₂ /Al₂O₃ multilayer shows a crystallization temperature of 673 K for the formation of tetragonal and monoclinic phases with significant amount of tetragonal phase over the latter. From the HTXRD profiles, crystallite size, lattice parameters, and thermal expansion coefficient of the tetragonal phase were calculated.

Date Published: 20 August 2009
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7404, Nanostructured Thin Films II, 74040P (20 August 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.825890

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7404:
Nanostructured Thin Films II
Geoffrey B. Smith; Akhlesh Lakhtakia; Cheng-Chung Lee, Editor(s)