Oxidation of TiAl surface with hyperthermal oxygen molecular beams

We report results of our detailed studies on the initial oxidation process of TiAl with a 2 eV hyperthermal oxygen molecular beam (HOMB) and thermal O2 in the backfilling. The oxidation processes are monitored by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements in conjunction with synchrotron radiation (SR). Oxidation of both Al and Ti occurs during the oxidation. The incident-energy and surface-temperature dependences of oxidation reveal that the precursor-mediated dissociative adsorption is the dominant initial step of oxidation in the thermal O2 backfilling. Thus, the efficiency of oxidation is higher for the thermal O2 backfilling than for the HOMB dose. The result is quite different from that on TiNi where the HOMB dose has the advantages in oxide layer growth at high O coverage. We succeeded in fabricating blue colored TiO2 and Al2O3 containing layers, combining HOMB and surface annealing.