title: Annealing-induced recovery of indents in thin Au(Fe) bilayer films.
abstract: We employed depth-sensing nanoindentation to produce ordered arrays of indents on the surface of 50 nm-thick Au(Fe) films deposited on sapphire substrates. The maximum depth of the indents was approximately one-half of the film thickness. The indented films were annealed at a temperature of 700 °C in a forming gas atmosphere. While the onset of solid-state dewetting was observed in the unperturbed regions of the film, no holes to the substrate were observed in the indented regions. Instead, the film annealing resulted in the formation of hillocks at the indent locations, followed by their dissipation and the formation of shallow depressions nearby after subsequent annealing treatments. This annealing-induced evolution of nanoindents was interpreted in terms of annihilation of dislocation loops generated during indentation, accompanied by the formation of nanopores at the grain boundaries and their subsequent dissolution. The application of the processes uncovered in this work show great potential for the patterning of thin films.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kosinova
authors.affiliation: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Applied Materials, PO Box 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany.
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schwaiger
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Leonid
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Klinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Eugen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rabkin
keywords: annealing; diffusion; dislocation loops; nanoindenation; thin films