Electrical Resistivity & Thermal Stability of Smooth Silver Thin Film for Nanoscale Optoelectronic Devices

Author

VJ, Logeeswaran ; Katzenmeyer, A. ; Islam, M. Saif ; Kobayashi, Nobuhiko P. ; Wu, W. ; Chaturvedi, P. ; Fang, Nicholas ; Wang, S.Y. ; Williams, R.Stanley

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of California at Davis, Davis, CA

fYear

2008

fDate

18-21 Aug. 2008

Firstpage

92

Lastpage

94

Abstract

We discuss the electrical resistivity and thermal stability of smooth thin silver (Ag) films characterized by significantly lower root mean square (RMS) surface roughness, peak-to-valley height distribution, and grain-size distribution. The smooth film was prepared by using a very thin (_~1-2 nm) nucleation layer of evaporated germanium (Ge) prior to Ag evaporation. The sheet resistance of the rough silver (10 nm Ag) film is R_Ag-rough _~51 Omega/sq compared to the smooth silver (10 nm Ag/2 nm Ge) film with R_Ag.smooth ~22 Omega/sq. The smooth Ag is also shown to be thermally more stable for temperatures less than 120degC.

Keywords

electrical resistivity; electron beam deposition; grain size; metallic thin films; metamaterials; nucleation; silver; surface roughness; thermal stability; Ag; Ge; e-beam evaporation; electrical resistivity; grain-size distribution; metamaterials; molecular electronics; nanophotonics; nanoscale optoelectronic devices; root mean square surface roughness; smooth thin film deposition; thermal stability; thin nucleation layer; Electric resistance; Nanoscale devices; Optoelectronic devices; Root mean square; Rough surfaces; Silver; Surface roughness; Thermal resistance; Thermal stability; Thin film devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nanotechnology, 2008. NANO '08. 8th IEEE Conference on

Conference_Location

Arlington, TX

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2103-9

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-2104-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NANO.2008.34

Filename

4617016