Synthesis and characterization of nanophase particles obtained by D.C. sputtering

• Published in: Scripta materialia Vol. 44; no. 8-9; pp. 1883 - 1887
• Main Authors: Gonzalez, G, Freites, J A, Rojas, C E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 20.08.2000
• ISSN: 1359-6462

The synthesis of nanophase materials by different methods has been investigated by numerous authors, inert gas evaporation has been one of the preferred methods. This method was introduced by Granqvist and Buhrman. However, thermal evaporation has a well known limitation for refractory metals and intermetallic compound, that does not allow to obtain nanophase particles this way. Hahn and Averback substituted the thermal evaporation source by a sputtering source, being able to fabricate a wide range of nanophase metals and intermetallic compounds. Chow et al. reported the obtention of Mo particles and Mo/Al multilayer nanocomposites, using a planar magnetron sputtering system. They studied the effect of sputtering pressure and power on the morphology and particle size distribution. The method of evaporation and gas condensation using sputtering is crucially dependent of the process parameters: gas pressure, sputter power and source-substrate distance. In the present work a detailed study of the effect of Ar pressure and cathode-substrate distance on the crystal structure, morphology, particle size and distribution is reported for Mo, Mo-Ni, Mo-W, Co and Al-Co.