Fabrication of Al zigzag thin films and evaluation of mechanical and hydrophobic properties
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Fabrication of Al zigzag thin films and evaluation of mechanical and hydrophobic properties Mahsa. Fakharpour1 · Ghazal. Taheri1 Received: 18 April 2020 / Accepted: 28 June 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this study, aluminum thin films with zigzag morphology on glass and steel substrates were fabricated by thermal evaporation method. Nanoindentation tests were performed on the films and their mechanical properties such as Young’s modulus, hardness, and stiffness of the films were investigated. The results show that the hardness of aluminum zigzag thin films is increased compared to the homogeneous thin films, while their Young’s modulus did not increase significantly. In the present study, the wettability properties of aluminum zigzag thin films were investigated without chemical methods. The surface roughness, grain size, and morphology of the zigzag thin films caused hydrophobicity and superhydrophobicity of these films. The static contact angle of the distilled water drop on these surfaces is measured as 93° and 152° for glass and steel substrates, respectively. Keywords Al zigzag thin film · Hardness · Stiffness · Elastic modulus · Hydrophobicity
1 Introduction Aluminum thin films are widely used in integrated circuits [1], solar cells [2–4], and mirror coatings [5–7]. These applications are related to their attractive properties such as high optical reflectivity, good corrosion resistance, low cost, and availability of this metal. However, pure aluminum thin films have little hardness about 0.6 GPa [8]. Aluminum thin films can be prepared in various methods such as sputtering and thermal evaporation. Nanostructures of thin films deposited by thermal evaporation depend on various parameters such as substrate temperature [9, 10], substrate distance to source of evaporation [11, 12], incident flux angle [13, 14], etc. By changing the angle of the incident flux, nanostructures with pre-designed morphologies can be prepared. The morphology of structure has a great influence on their physical properties and performance. Moreover, the surface roughness and, as a result, the mechanical and hydrophobic properties of the thin film change when the incident flux * Mahsa. Fakharpour [email protected] Ghazal. Taheri [email protected] 1
Department of Physics, Maybod Branch, Islamic Azad University, Maybod, Iran
and azimuthal angles change. Various methods have been developed to determine the mechanical properties of thin films such as bending of microbeams and nanoindentation [15–17]. In recent years, indentation method has attracted the interest of researchers because of its many advantages over other methods. In indentation, test can determine the film deformation relative to the substrate and the influence of the substrate on the mechanical properties of the film depends on the depth of indent. To avoid the influence of the substrate on the mechanical properties of the film, the indent depth should be less than 10% of the film thickness [18],
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