Abstract

When thin film materials such as titania and zirconia are deposited at an oblique angle on to a substrate a tilted columnar (TC) microstructure develops. Electron microscope observations of thin film sections show that the angle between the columns and the substrate normal is determined by, and somewhat less than, the deposition angle. In fact the tangent rule,¹ which relates the two angles, was discovered after some of the earliest electron microscope observations on fractured thin film sections.

© 1995 Optical Society of America