DEFECT STUDIES OF THIN LAYERS BY THE VIBRATING-REED TECHNIQUE

The vibrating-reed technique has been successfully adapted to internal friction studies of thin-layer materials. Three examples are described, related to the oxygen contamination of niobium films, grain-boundary sliding of aluminum films, and anelasticity due to hydrogen in metallic glasses. Emphasis is given to the use of thin high-Q substrates as a means of examining supported films down to 0.1µm thickness. It has been found that the behavior of films can be radically different from that of bulk samples. For example, two-stage grain-boundary sliding with an activation energy of only 0.55eV has been observed in aluminum films. In metallic glasses, a peak associated with the presence of hydrogen in small low-symmetry interstitial sites has been found in many different alloys, including Pd80Si20, Fe80B20, Nb40Ni60 and Cu57Zr43