Influence of doping with iron on nanostructure formation of aluminum thin films on glass substrate

Abstract

The surface nanostructure of Al and Al-1.5 at.% Fe alloy films obtained by ion-beam-assisted deposition on glass substrates have been investigated by means of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Analysis of SPM images of the surface of deposited thin films has been performed to plot histograms of the distribution of heights of peaks and valleys of the surfaces. It was revealed that doping with iron increases the morphological heterogeneities of the surface of films. The average roughness of film surface is increased from 23.74 to 38.52 nm with an increase in coating time from 6 to 10 h. Meanwhile, the average diameter of micro-droplets on the surface of films decreases by 1.6 times with increasing the deposition time. The new hybrid parameter k was calculated in addition to the ISO roughness parameters to obtain information about the quantitative ratio of the transverse and longitudinal roughness parameters of the nanorelief of samples. The correlation of the film roughness parameters with the size and density of particles of the micro-droplet fraction was established.