Coefficient of thermal expansion and elastic modulus of thin films

The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), biaxial modulus, and stress of some amorphous semiconductors (a-Si:H, a-C:H, a-Ge:H, and a-GeCx:H) and metallic (Ag and Al) thin films were studied. The thermal expansion and the biaxial modulus were measured by the thermally induced bending technique. The stress of the metallic films, deposited by thermal evaporation (Ag and Al), is tensile, while that of the amorphous films deposited by sputtering (a-Si:H, a-Ge:H, and a-GeCx:H) and by glow discharge (a-C:H) is compressive. We observed that the coefficient of thermal expansion of the tetrahedral amorphous thin films prepared in this work, as well as that of the films reported in literature, depen…