Heterogeneous Microstructures Tuned in a High Throughput Architecture

These data were gathered from thin film resistive heating coils on a glass substrate. The temperature of a given pulse was first calibrated using a gold sample with a known temperature vs resistance relationship. The same power pulse was then applied to a sample material of interest (in this case multilayer Ni/Al) with the assumption that its temperature response would be identical. It was discovered that this technique was highly sensitive to morphological changes of the thin film structure on the microscale, as evidenced by a resistance peak corresponding well to periodic spikes in intermetallic phase concentration gathered from EDX linescans along the Al layer.