Dynamic evolution of internal stress, grain growth, and crystallographic texture in arc-evaporated AlTiN thin films using in-situ synchrotron x-ray diffraction

Understanding the nucleation and growth of polycrystalline thin films is a long-standing goal. Numerous studies have been done to determine the grain size, stress, and the ideal crystallographic orientation in films. The majority of past studies have either employed an ex-situ methodology or only monitor the development of macroscopic stress in real-time. There has never been any research done on the simultaneous changes in crystallographic texture, grain size, and microscopic stress in polycrystalline thin films. In this study, we investigated the generation and temporal evolution of texture, grain size, and internal stress in cathodic arc evaporated Al0.50Ti0.50N thin films using a bespoke deposition apparatus designed for use with 2-dimensional synchrotron x-ray diffraction technique. The influence of the substrate temperature is investigated in terms of the emergence and development of texture, grain size and stress evolution. A dynamic evolution of the crystallographic texture is observed as the overall film thickness varies. We clearly resolved two regime of films growth based on stress evolution. Beyond a threshold grain size (∼ 14 nm), the stress scales inversely to the average grain sizes, and as the film thickness increases, immediate compressive stress relaxation was seen. An extensive ex-situ evaluation of thin films using electron microscopies and electron diffraction was performed to support the in-situ x-ray diffraction results.