Effects of internal stresses on the mechanical properties of deposition thin films

Thin films become an important technology because of its outstanding performance in wide engineering applications. The basic of thin film technology is to characterize its mechanical proper-ties, which are strongly dependent on the internal stresses induced by deposition processes. Therefore, an investigation of mechanical properties of thin films affected by internal stresses is presented. In this work, titanium thin films are deposited on silicon wafer substrate by evaporation deposition. internal stresses of thin films are measured by a surface profiler and the elastic modulus and hardness of the thin films are tested by a nanoindenter with a standard Berkovich probe tip. Corelation between the internal stresses and mechanical properties are also discussed. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.