TOF-SIMS investigations on thermally treated copper-molybdenum films on a carbon substrate

Metal-matrix composites are made of materials with different physical and chemical properties. It is possible to change the mechanical, thermal and electrical properties by variation of the mass ratio of the components; therefore, metal-matrix composites have great value for industrial and technological applications. Copper-carbon composites have a good chance to be used as heat sinks for electronic components, which can be explained by their high thermal conductivity, low density and an adjustable coefficient of thermal expansion. On the other hand, the mechanical adhesion of copper and carbon is extremely weak because of their immiscibility and weak chemical interactions. In order to compensate for the low wettability of carbon by copper, a thin molybdenum intermediate layer is used as an adhesion promoter. In this work a time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry technique was primarily used to detect the carbide formation in the molybdenum and copper layers, depending on different temperature conditions during sputter deposition and annealing afterwards. The CuMo layers were deposited by magnetron sputtering. The adhesion of the samples was determined by a destructive pull-off test. We found that heat treatment mainly modifies the carbide formation in the molybdenum and copper layers.