Effect of working gas pressure on interlayer mixing in magnetron-deposited Mo/Si multilayers

By methods of cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy and small-angle x-ray scattering (λ = 0.154 nm) the influence of Ar gas pressure (1 to 4 mTorr) on the growth of amorphous interfaces in Mo/Si multilayers (MLs) deposited by DC magnetron sputtering is studied. The significant reduction in the ML period, which is evident as a volumetric contraction, is observed in MLs deposited at Ar pressure where the mean-free path for the sputtered atoms is comparable with the magnetronsubstrate distance. Some reduction in the thickness of the amorphous interlayers with Ar pressure increase is found, where the composition of the interlayers is enriched with molybdenum. The interface modification resulted in an increase in EUV reflectance of the Mo/Si ML

Interdiffusion in Sc/Si multilayers

An understanding of interdiffusion in nano-scale multilayers is of great scientific and practical interest because intermixing is responsible for temporal and thermal instability of EUV and soft X-ray multilayer mirrors. In this paper we study the kinetics of silicide growth in Sc/Si layered coatings. It was found that an amorphous ScSi silicide forms at the scandium-silicon interface. The growth of the ScSi silicide layer obeys diffusion kinetics rather than a chemical reaction kinetics. The silicide growth is limited by the diffusion of Si atoms through the silicide layer towards the silicide-scandium interface where the chemical reaction takes place. As a result of a large asymmetry of interdiffusion the growth of the silicide occurs mainly at the silicide-scandium interface. The diffusion growth of the silicide deviates significantly from the classic parabolic law at the early stage of interdiffusion (Fig. 1). Such a nonlinear growth behavior can be explained with a relaxation model. The growth rate is maximal in the beginning of annealing due to a large amount of excess free volume in the as-deposited multilayer. During the annealing a relaxation processes occurs, and diffusion slows down. Eventually the growth rate is stabilized, and a parabolic regime of the silicide growth is observed