THE IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL LAYER THICKNESS ON THE CU/W NANO-MULTILAYER-TO-NANOCOMPOSITE TRANSITION

Nanomultilayers (NMLs) and nanocomposites (NCs) are functional nanoarchitectures, which mechanical, chemical and/or physical properties can be tailored by smart microstructural and interfacial design 1. NMLs, constituted of alternating nanolayers of immiscible metals, can evolve upon thermal treatment in a NC (multilayer structure degradation) with tailored mechanical, electrical and/or thermal properties. Particularly, NMLtoNC transition was observed in Cu/W NMLs (alternating bilayers: 5 nm Cu 5 nm W) during high temperature annealing in vacuum 2. It was shown that the driving force for the transformation is provided by the minimization of the total Gibbs energy, as achieved by a reduction of internal interfaces.