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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
When deposited at room temperature, sputtered NiTi thin films are amorphous and need to be crystallized before they can be used as a functional material. We present the results of an annealing study on substrate-constrained NiTi shape memory thin films. Amorphous films of a NiTi shape memory alloy were deposited by UHV sputtering. Films of thickness 1.0 μm were grown on (100) Si wafers both with and without an LPCVD SiNx barrier. The as-deposited films were annealed in vacuum at temperatures ranging from 500°C to 800°C. The microstructure of the annealed films was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and Rutherford back scattering (RBS).