Study of Properties of AlN Thin Films Deposited by Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

Study of Aluminum nitride (AlN) thin film deposited on silicon wafer and glass substrates by DC magnetron sputtering technique at different power variation. The X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) study revealed the formation of the AlN phase. The optical characteristics of films, such as refractiveindex, extinction coefficient, and average thickness, were calculated by Swanepoel’s method using transmittance measurements. The refractiveindex and average roughness values of the films increased with film thickness. At lower power (100W) and constant gas ratio the film surface roughness was 1.7 nm. It was observed that films coated at lower power were 75% transparent in the visible spectral region

Correlations of plasma parameters and properties of magnetron sputtered TiN films

Titanium nitride thin films have been grown on Si substrates by using DC reactive magnetron sputtering from a titanium target at different DC power (100–400 W). The different plasma parameters such as plasma potential, floating potential, electron temperature, electron density and ion density have been measured using a Langmuir probe. The electron energy distribution function (EEDF) has been evaluated from the second derivative of I-V plot of the Langmuir probe data and has shown to be bi-Maxwellian. The correlations between measured plasma parameters and the properties of TiN films deposited at the same operating conditions have been studied. It has been observed that the hardness decreases and the resistivity increases in films deposited at higher DC power. This is attributed to the growth of Ti2N phase at higher powers. The mechanical properties of the films have also been studied