Development of surface relief on polycrystalline metals due to sputtering

The characteristics of surface microrelief that appear in sputtering experiments with polycrystalline metals of various grain sizes have been studied. Specimens with grain sizes varying from 30–70 nm in the case of crystallized amorphous alloys, to 1–3 μm for technical tungsten grade and 10–100 μm for recrystallized tungsten were investigated. A model is proposed for the development of roughness on polycrystalline metals which is based on the dependence of sputtering rate on crystal orientation. The results of the modeling are in good agreement with experiments showing that the length scale of roughness is much larger than the grain size.