Characterization of polycrystalline gradient thin film by X-ray diffraction method

A direct method is proposed to quantitatively characterise the structural depth profiles emerged in the polycrystalline thin films based on the information obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) with various incident angles and treated by a numerical procedure known as the constrained linear inversion. It should be noted that the proposed method was neither sensitive to the random noise appearing in experiment nor to the error originated from the measured thickness of the specimen. To testify the validity of the method, XRD measurements were carried out on a specially designed Pd/Ag bilayer sample, which was annealed at 490 degrees C for 20 min, and the depth profiles were accordingly calculated through resolving the obtained XRD patterns. The elemental concentration depth profile of the Pd/Ag bilayer sample was in turn calculated from the resolved patterns, which was in good agreement with those obtained by Auger electron analysis on the annealed sample.