Annealing Behaviour, Tcr Values And Defect Density For "Cold-Condensed" Silver Films

Abstract

Thin silver films were deposited under vacuum of 10^ -6 Torr by thermal evaporation onto cooled glass substrates kept at low temperatures. Pure argon gas prevailed as residual gas. Annealing behaviour of the electrical resistance and defect density in Ag films was investigatd. Analysis of the result using Vand's theory showed that the variation of the function F0 expressing the law of distribution of the decay energies depends on the film thickness as well as on the deposition temperature. The evaluated activation energy was found to be about 0.1 and 0.2 eV for films deposited at 175 and 225 K respectively. For thickness ^ 120 A, the activation energy varied slightly with thickness for films deposited at 225 K. The temperature coefficient of resistance of a film of infinite thickness depended on the deposition temperature.