Stress in Evaporated and Sputtered Thin Films – A Comparison

Stress in thin films and heterostructures is often the cause for malfunction of respective applications, but enables also the controlled engineering of novel materials properties. In the last years considerable progress has been achieved in understanding the mechanisms for stress evolution and relaxation. Whereas originally the stress generation appeared to be strongly dependent on the chosen deposition technique, it turned out that many of the involved stress mechanisms apply independently of the deposition technique and are intrinsically determined by the growth process. A comparative review of recent results on the stress of polycrystalline and epitaxial thin films prepared by evaporation and sputtering techniques will be given. The review focuses on stress results measured in situ during the film deposition.