Investigation of the mechanism of solid-state dewetting of silver thin films using spatial correlation analysis of hole patterns

The mechanism of solid-state dewetting is investigated using spatial correlation analysis of holes formed in thermally annealed silver films. This work demonstrates that silver thin films can evolve to form a hole pattern with substantial spatial correlation during solid-state dewetting. The spatial correlation is observed only in films annealed under oxygen for an amount of time necessary to generate a sufficiently high hole number density. This indicates that the holes form via heterogeneous nucleation, and that the nucleation process becomes increasingly spatially correlated due to the pre-existence of other holes. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics