THE VISCOSITY OF AMORPHOUS PD-SI AND PD-SI/PD-SI-FE MULTILAYERS DETERMINED FROM STRESS-RELAXATION IN THIN-FILMS ON A SUBSTRATE

Substrate curvature measurements were used to measure viscous flow in ion-beam sputtered amorphous Pd-Si and amorphous Pd-Si/Pd-Si-Fe multilayered thin films. Viscosities were found to increase linearly with time, characteristic of a bimolecular flow defect annihilation process. The results for Q=2.4+/-0.8 eV, the isoconfigurational enthalpy, and eta, the change in viscosity with time, of the Pd78Si22 thin films are in agreement with the values found in tensile creep experiments on thin films and melt-quenched ribbons. No dependence on repeat length was found for the viscosity of the multilayered films. Although constant eta values were found for the multilayers studied here, an analysis shows that this is not necessarily the case for multilayers in which sublayers have a constant eta.