Morphology of buried interfaces in ion-assisted magnetron sputter deposited 11B4C-containing Ni/Ti multilayer neutron optics investigated by grazing incidence small angle scattering

Multilayer neutron optics require precise control of interface morphology for optimal performance. In this work, we investigate the effects of different growth conditions on the interface morphology of Ni/Ti based multilayers, with a focus on incorporating low-neutron-absorbing 11B4C and using different ion assistance schemes. Grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering was used to probe the structural and morphological details of buried interfaces, revealing that the layers become more strongly correlated and the interfaces form mounds with increasing amounts of 11B4C. Applying high flux ion assistance during growth can reduce mound formation but lead to interface mixing, while a high flux modulated ion assistance scheme with an initial buffer layer grown at low ion energy and the top layer at higher ion energy prevents intermixing. The optimal condition was found to be adding 26.0 at. flux modulated ion assistance. A multilayer with a period of 48.2 Å and 100 periods was grown under these conditions, and coupled fitting to neutron and X-ray reflectivity data revealed an average interface width of only 2.7 Å, a significant improvement over the current state-of-the-art commercial Ni/Ti multilayers. Overall, our study demonstrates that the addition of 11B4C and the use of high flux modulated ion assistance during growth can significantly improve the interface morphology of Ni/Ti multilayers, leading to improved neutron optics performance.