Metal Oxidation Kinetics and the Transition from Thin to Thick Films

Abstract

We report an investigation of growth kinetics and transition from thin to thick films during metal oxidation. In the thin film limit (< 20 nm), Cabrera and Mott's theory is usually adopted by explicitly considering ionic drift through the oxide in response to electric fields, where the growth kinetics follow an inverse logarithmic law. It is generally accepted that Wagner's theory, involving self-diffusion, is valid only in the limit of thick film regime and leads to parabolic growth kinetics. Theory presented here unifies the two models and provides a complete description of oxidation including the transition from thin to thick film. The range of validity of Cabrera and Mott's theory and Wagner's theory can be well defined in terms of the Debye-Huckel screening length. The transition from drift-dominated ionic transport for thin film to diffusion-dominated transport for thick film is found to strictly follow the direct logarithmic law that is frequently observed in many experiments.

References in corpus (5)

• Phase-field modeling of solute precipitation and dissolution
• Phase field and level set methods for modeling solute precipitation and/or dissolution
• Phase-field modeling of two-dimensional solute precipitation/dissolution: Solid fingers and diffusion-limited precipitation
• A Generalized Mathematical Framework for Thermal Oxidation Kinetics
• A Reduced-Boundary-Function Method for Convective Heat Transfer with Axial Heat Conduction and Viscous Dissipation

Cited by in corpus (3)

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