Creation of biaxial body center cubic tungsten nanorods under dynamic shadowing effect

•Stable alpha-phase biaxial W nanorods were produced with dynamic flipping rotation.•Metastable beta-phase W nanorods were grown by stationary oblique angle deposition.•Biaxial stable W nanorods could be used as a buffer layer for semiconductors.

Using a dynamic oblique angle deposition in a flipping rotation mode where the flux incident angle continuously changes during the magnetron sputter deposition, we demonstrated that a stable, biaxial (110)[11¯0] body center cubic (alpha-phase) tungsten nanorod film can be grown on amorphous substrates. In contrast, we showed that only a fiber-textured, metastable A15 (beta-phase) tungsten nanorod film was obtained using the conventional rotation mode where the oblique incident flux angle was fixed with the substrate rotating around the surface normal. Different flipping rotation speeds were performed to study the effect of dynamic shadowing on texture axis angular dispersion. The sample grown at 0.3 rotations per minute was observed to have the minimum out-of-plane and in-plane orientation dispersions characterized by the reflection high energy electron diffraction surface pole figure technique. The biaxial texture selection under the flipping rotation mode is explained qualitatively.