Abstract
It is well known that a sputtered metal film grows with inclined columns when the incident angle of sputtered particles inclines to the substrate normal. This phenomenon is usually explained by so-called self-shadowing effect. We have shown that the novel structured film, such as zigzag and/or helical columnar structure along with the growth direction, can be grown by changing the incident angle of sputtered particles into substrates during deposition. The relationship between sputtering conditions and film structures has also been investigated. Furthermore, the contact angle of a water drop on the Cr films with helical columnar structure was found to be much smaller than that on the inclined columnar film. This suggests that we can control the characteristics of surface by coating these novel columnar structured films.
