Preferentially oriented electron beam deposited TiN thin films using focused jet of nitrogen gas

Abstract

A modified electron beam evaporator has been used to synthesise TiN thin films with (111) preferred orientation. This new design involved in creating local plasma by accelerating the secondary electrons emitted from the evaporating ingot by a positively biased semi-cylindrical anode plate (biased activated reactive evaporation). To accelerate the reaction to form TiN, a jet of gas has been focused towards the substrate as a reactive gas. We have observed a preferred orientation (111) with to the surface normal in pole figure analysis. The residual stress by the classical sin technique did not yield any tangible result due to the preferred orientation. The hardness and modulus measured by nanoindentation technique was around 19.5 and 214 GPa. The continuous multicycle indentation test on these films exhibited a stress relaxation.

Keywords:

• E-beam deposition
• GIXRD
• pole figure
• nanoindentation

Acknowledgments

F.J. would like to acknowledge Mr. A.K. Balamurugan for the discussion regarding the SIMS studies. We would like to thank the UGC-DAE-CSR facility at Kalpakkam for the GIXRD.

Disclosure

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).