Analysis of elastic properties of Ni/Mo multilayers when coupling a tensile tester to an X-ray diffractometer

Elastic constants of thin films are misunderstood and subject to polemic in the case of multilayer systems with low period thicknesses. When straining in the elastic domain the film/substrate set inside a diffractometer, it i s then possible to determine by x-ray diffraction the Poisson's ratio of th e studied film. We applied this method to a multilayer system containing 13 bilayers of 8 and 15 nm thick layers of nickel and molybdenum respectively . The results obtained on the Poisson's ratio value in molybdenum layers de monstrate the feasibility of such measurements.