Evaluation of self-annealing behavior of electrodeposited silver film by EBSP analysis

Self-annealing behavior of an electrodeposited Ag film which has been preferentially oriented in (001) direction was investigated by electron backscatter diffraction pattern (EBSP) analysis. There are few clear grains of micrometer order in the initial state just after electrodepositing. The result shows that the electrodeposited film would be in amorphous state or could be consisted of very fine grains which size cannot be analyzed by EBSP. Self-annealing starts in storage at R.T. for a few hours and recrystallization almost completes in the storage time of 6 h. Recrystallized grains with relatively random orientation and a few micrometer order size have nucleate in storage time of a few hours. Afterward, (001) oriented grains preferentially grow in the self-annealing process. During self-annealing, the area fraction of (001) oriented grains increases rapidly and saturates in the range from 70 % to 80 % at the storage time over 6 h. The area fraction of (111) oriented grains slightly increases with increasing storage time, but it becomes at most 10 % even when self-annealing process has completed. On the contrary, the area fraction of (101) oriented grains decreases with increasing storage time and it becomes almost 0 % at the storage time over 6 h. Two patterns were found for formation of (001) oriented grains. One is that (001) orientation occurs at the same time as recrystallization and (001) oriented grains grow. In the other pattern, recrystallized grains oriented to near (001) in self-annealing process, subsequently the grains tilted from (001) are rotated to (001) by further storage.