| We have designed a binary metallic alloy for nanoscale resonator applications. Magnetron sputtering was used to deposit films with different stoichiometries of aluminum and molybdenum and then characterized the microstructure and physical properties of each film. A structure zone map is proposed to describe the dependence of surface and bulk structure on composition. We then fabricated proof of principle resonators from the Al-32 at.%Mo composition, selected for its optimized physical properties. An optical interferometer was used to characterize the frequency response of our resonators.;In the second half of this thesis we investigate the growth of faceted polycrystalline thin films with modeling and simulations. A new analytic model is derived for the case of orientation dependent facet growth velocity and the dependence of growth on initial grain orientations is explicitly calculated. Level set simulations were used to both confirm this analytic model and extend it to include various angular flux distributions, corresponding to different deposition methods. From these simulations, the effects of self-shadowing on polycrystalline film growth are quantitatively evaluated. |
