QUANTITATIVE-ANALYSIS OF THE DEFORMATION AND CHEMICAL PROFILES OF STRAINED MULTILAYERS

Deformation in Au/Ni strained multilayers has been characterised by HR EM image processing. The HREM strain profile has been used to determin e the Ni chemical profile in the structure, which is compared to the c hemical profile obtained by scanning PEELS analysis through the multil ayer. The structural evolution of the Au/Ni MBE multilayer grown with an increasing number of Ni layers has been characterised. When the thi ckness of Ni becomes larger than 5 monolayers, the growth is no longer pseudo-morphological: a structural change occurs which has been shown in numerical simulations too.