Nano-twinned structure on metallic thin film surface and method for forming the same

Abstract

A nano-twinned structure on a metallic thin film surface is provided. The nano-twinned structure includes a substrate, an adhesive-lattice-buffer layer over the substrate, and a metallic thin film including Ag, Cu, Au, Pd or Ni over the adhesive-lattice-buffer layer. The bottom region of the metallic thin film has equi-axial coarse grains. The surface region of the metallic thin film contains parallel-arranged high-density twin boundaries (Σ3+Σ9) with a pitch from 1 nm to 100 nm. The quantity of the parallel-arranged twin boundaries is 50% to 80% of the total quantity of twin boundaries in the cross-sectional view of the metallic thin film. The parallel-arranged twin boundaries include 30% to 90% [111] crystal orientation. The nano-twinned structure on the metallic thin film surface is formed through a post-deposition ion bombardment on the evaporated metallic thin film surface after the evaporation process.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.