Grain Boundary Driven Plateau-Rayleigh Instability in Multilayer Nanocrystalline Thin Film: A Phase-field Study

TL;DR

This study uses phase-field simulations to investigate grain boundary-driven layer instability in multilayer nanocrystalline thin films, revealing how microstructural factors influence thermal stability and proposing measures to enhance it.

Contribution

The paper introduces a phase-field simulation approach to analyze grain boundary-induced layer instability, linking it to Plateau-Rayleigh instability criteria and microstructural parameters.

Findings

Layer instability arises from grain boundary grooving.

Increasing layer thickness improves stability.

Lower bilayer thickness and grain boundary mobility enhance stability.

Abstract

Thermal stability of nanocrystalline multilayer thin film is of paramount importance as the applications often involve high temperature. Here we report on the layer instability phenomenon in binary polycrystalline thin film initiating from the grain boundary migrations at higher temperatures using phase-field simulations. Effect of layer thickness, bilayer spacing and the absence of grain boundary are also investigated along with the grain boundary mobility of individual phases on the layer stability. Layer instability in the polycrystalline film is shown to arise from the grain boundary grooving which originates spontaneously from the presence of grain boundaries. Our results show that the growth of the perturbation generated from the differential curvature follows Plateau-Rayleigh instability criterion. Increase in layer thickness, lower bilayer thickness as well as lower grain boundary mobility improve layer stability. Phase-field simulations show similar microstructural evolution as has been observed in our Zirconium (Zr)/Zirconium Nitride (ZrN) system experimentally. Detail analysis performed in this work to understand the mechanisms of layer instability leads us to predict measures which will improve the thermal stability of multilayer nanocrystalline thin film.