Thin silver films have been prepared by vacuum deposition on acetyl-cellulose foils. Internal stresses in these films have been measured by sin
2 φ method of X-ray stress measurement after removing the substrates in methyl acetate. It has been found that large tensile stresses remained in substrate free films.
The stress is released as much as 1 × 10
9 dyn/cm
2 in air within 20 hours. The tensile stress increases with thickness up to 1500Å and become constant, dependent on the deposition rate.
The origin of the stress in the unbacked film is considered to be due to non uniformity of deformations in the film.
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