A comparison of different methods for x-ray diffraction line broadening analysis of Ti and Ag UHV deposited thin films: nanostructural dependence on substrate temperature and film thickness

The influence of substrate temperature and film thickness on the nanostructure of titanium (HCP) and silver (FCC) thin films deposited on glass substrates under UHV conditions by electron beam evaporation is investigated. The preferred orientation, nanostrain and stacking and twin fault probabilities in Ag and Ti films are determined as a function of film thickness and substrate temperature. A (111) preferred orientation is observed for silver films, which is dependent on both the film thickness and substrate temperature, with the highest value at a substrate temperature of 500 K. Ti/glass films showed a (002) preferred orientation. Nanostructural parameters such as the crystallite size (size of coherently diffracting domains) and nanostrain are evaluated using the Scherrer and Stocks-Wilson relations, the Williamson-Hall plot, and the single-Voigt (SV), double-Voigt (DV) and Warren-Averbach (WA) methods. Analysis of the results obtained using these methods showed that the most suitable approaches to x-ray diffraction line broadening analysis, applicable to both FCC and HCP polycrystalline thin film structures, are SV, DV and WA. The results show that the crystallite sizes increase with substrate temperature and film thickness, while the nanostrain and lattice constants decrease with thickness. The crystallite size distribution function was obtained from the size broadened part of the DV function, and the results show a shift in the maximum to larger sizes with increasing temperature and thickness.