Interdiffusion study of amorphous Ni–Si multilayer at low temperature

Little is known about the interdiffusion in the amorphous Ni–Si multilayer due to the lack of suitable experimental method. In this paper, the interdiffusion phenomena in the amorphous Ni–Si multilayer are investigated by an in situ x-ray diffraction technique. The temperature-dependent interdiffusivity obtained by monitoring the decay of the first-order modulation peak as a function of annealing time can be described in terms of the Arrhenius relation. The effective interdiffusivities can be expressed as De(T)=2.13 ×10−17 exp[−(0.61±0.02)/kBT] m2/s (423–613 K). A retarded interstitial diffusion mechanism is suggested to explain the diffusion process in the amorphous multilayer films.