Columnar growth structure and evolution of wavy interface morphology in amorphous multilayered thin films

Columnar growth and evolution of wavy interface morphology, formation of no des and growth morphology on a random surface was investigated by cross-sec tional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) in sputtered amorphous Si/Ge (a-Si/Ge) multilayers. It was demonstrated that shadowing is responsible f or the formation of these morphological features and Huygens principle can be applied for their description. For the study of the relation of the colu mnar growth and wavy interface morphology periodic multilayers were deposit ed with layer thicknesses up to 50 nm. In a-Si/Ge multilayers the minima of the wavy interface morphology, coincide with the column boundaries. The di ameter of columns shows linear dependence on the thickness of the thicker c omponent layer, indicating that the correlated multilayer structure is esta blished by the surface morphology of the thicker component layer. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.