  The surfactant mediated growth of Ti/Ni multilayers is studied. They were
prepared using ion beam sputtering at different adatom energies. It was found
that the interface roughness decreased significantly when the multilayers were
sputtered with Ag as surfactant at an ion energy of 0.75 keV. On the other
hand, when the ion energy was increased to 1 keV, it resulted in enhanced
intermixing at the interfaces and no appreciable effect of Ag surfactant could
be observed. On the basis of the obtained results, the influence of adatom
energy on the surfactant mediated growth mechanism is discussed.
