Enhanced interfacial roughness in metallic multilayers prepared by pulsed cathodic arc deposition

The interfacial roughness of Fe/C multilayers with individual layer thicknesses from a few angstroms to a few tens of angstroms, fabricated using a pulsed cathodic arc, have been studied by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Very thin perfect 100-period Fe/C multilayers were prepared with flat and smooth interfaces in the sub-nanometer range by a high degree of ionization of the pulsed plasma.