Abstract
Nanostructured Cu/Fe multilayers on Si (1 1 0) and Si (1 0 0) substrates were prepared by magnetron sputtering, with individual layer thicknesses h varying from 0.75 to 200 nm. The growth orientation relationships between Cu and Fe at the interfaces were determined to be of the Kurdjumov-Sachs and Nishiyama-Wasserman type. Nanoscale columnar grains in Fe, with an average grain size of 11-23 nm, played a dominant role in the strengthening mechanism when h ≥ 50 nm. At smaller h the hardness of Cu/Fe multilayers with (1 0 0) texture approached a peak value, followed by softening due to the formation of fully coherent interfaces. However, abundant twins were observed in Cu/Fe films with (1 1 1) texture when h = 0.75 nm, which led to the retention of high hardness in the multilayers.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 6312-6321 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Acta Materialia |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue number | 18 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge financial support by the US Army Research Office – Materials Science Division, under Contract No. W911NF-09-1-0223. Partial support by DOE-NEUP under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517-00088120 and NSF 1129065 are also acknowledged. We also acknowledge the use of microscopes at the Microscopy and Imaging Center at Texas A&M University.
Keywords
- Multilayers
- Nanoindentation
- Sputtering
- Strengthening
- Twinning