Structure Formation During Deposition Of Polycrystalline Metallic Thin Films

The self-organized structure evolution of elemental and multicomponent/multiphase polycrystalline metallic thin films is discussed and summarized in a synthesized view. Structure evolution is considered in its entirety and discussed in frames of the pathway of fundamental phenomena of structure formation (nucleation, crystal growth and grain growth) which are related to atomic processes. It is shown that in the case of functional, generally multicomponent films, the key issues are the understanding of the very complex atomic processes, the nucleation and separation of phases as well as their interdependent, competitive growth. The derived temperature (TSZM) and composition (CoSZM) structure zone models describe the interdependent development of the phases, the grain size and shape, the texture and surface morphology.