Metastable phases in Co-Ag system formed by ion beam assisted deposition at the glancing ion incidence

Co metastable structures are formed in Co-Ag alloy films with the aid of glancing incident ions during deposition. The structures of Co are characterized by X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy at the Co K-edge. The results indicate that two kinds of Co phases coexist in every film. One is α-Co or β-Co and the other is named fcc-II with a = 4.06 Å. It is thought that the stress between Co and Ag clusters induces the formation of β-Co and the fcc-II phase. The role of glancing incident ions is to trigger a collision cascade on the surface and to facilitate both thermodynamics and kinetics aspects of cluster mixing.