Amorphous and metastable phase formation in systems with positive heats of mixing using high-rate sputter deposition

The triode sputtering technique and a split-target arrangement were used to produce metastable crystalline and amorphous phases in the Cu-W, Mo-Cu, Ag-Fe, Ag-Cu, Pu-Ta and Pu-V systems. These systems all exhibit liquid and solid immiscibility and have positive heats of mixing and atomic radii that differ by at least 10%. The sputtered coatings, whose thickness varied between 25 and 200 microns, were formed at deposition rates between 35 and 200 Angstrom/s. They were characterized using x-ray diffraction, TEM, microprobe, microhardness, and DSC techniques. The observed amorphous and metastable solid solution phases are discussed in terms of predicated heats of formation for these phases using Miedema's thermodynamic approximations that include chemical, elastic, and structural contributions. Differences in compositional ranges observed by high rate sputter deposition compared to other vapor deposition techniques (e.g., coevaporation) appeared to arise as a result of processes that occur during deposition or immediately following deposition