The effect of cavities produced by focused ion beam milling on solid state dewetting of thin Au films

The goal of this study was to explore the possibility to control the nucleation and expansion of holes during initial stages of solid state dewetting of thin polycrystalline Au film deposited on sapphire substrate. To this end, we fabricated isolated triangular cavities in the film employing Ga⁺ ion milling in the focused ion beam instrument. The following dewetting heat treatments indicated that the cavities do promote early nucleation and expansion of dewetting holes, yet these holes develop tortuous shapes dominated by a random distribution of nearby hillocks in the film. Deep holes exhibited a triangular patch of amorphous Al-Ga-O phase at their bottom which retained its size and morphology during subsequent thermal treatments. This amorphous phase caused some delay in holes expansion at high temperatures. We proposed a geometrical model of the retracting metal film edge pinning by the amorphous phase. The observed pinning phenomenon can be utilized for the design of patterned thin films with increased thermal stability.