Surface morphology of titanium nitride thin films synthesized by DC reactive magnetron sputtering

In this paper the influence of temperature on the 3-D surface morphology of titanium nitride (TiN) thin films synthesized by DC reactive magnetron sputtering has been analyzed. The 3-D morphology variation of TiN thin films grown on p-type Si (100) wafers was investigated at four different deposition temperatures (473 K, 573 K, 673 K, 773 K) in order to evaluate the relation among the 3-D micro-textured surfaces. The 3-D surface morphology of TiN thin films was characterized by means of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and fractal analysis applied to the AFM data. The 3-D surface morphology revealed the fractal geometry of TiN thin films at nanometer scale. The global scale properties of 3-D surface geometry were quantitatively estimated using the fractal dimensions D, determined by the morphological envelopes method. The fractal dimension D increased with the substrate temperature variation from 2.36 (at 473 K) to 2.66 (at 673 K) and then decreased to 2.33 (at 773 K). The fractal analysis in correlation with the averaged power spectral density (surface) yielded better quantitative results of morphological changes in the TiN thin films caused by substrate temperature variations, which were more precise, detailed, coherent and reproducible. It can be inferred that fractal analysis can be easily applied for the investigation of morphology evolution of different film/substrate interface phases obtained using different thin-film technologies

Multifractal characteristics of titanium nitride thin films

The study presents a multi-scale microstructural characterization of three-dimensional (3-D) micro-textured surface of titanium nitride (TiN) thin films prepared by reactive DC magnetron sputtering in correlation with substrate temperature variation. Topographical characterization of the surfaces, obtained by atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis, was realized by an innovative multifractal method which may be applied for AFM data. The surface micromorphology demonstrates that the multifractal geometry of TiN thin films can be characterized at nanometer scale by the generalized dimensions Dq and the singularity spectrum f(α). Furthermore, to improve the 3-D surface characterization according with ISO 25178-2:2012, the most relevant 3-D surface roughness parameters were calculated. To quantify the 3-D nanostructure surface of TiN thin films a multifractal approach was developed and validated, which can be used for the characterization of topographical changes due to the substrate temperature variation

First principle study of Li-intercalated (5, 5) ZnO nanotube bundles

We have investigated the geometric and electronic structure of Li-intercalated (5, 5) zinc oxide nanotube (ZnONT) bundles via density functional theory as implemented in the code WIEN2k. Our results show that the geometrical structures are changed because of intercalation of lithium. The effect of Li intercalation on the density of state and electronic band structure is a shift of the Fermi energy due to the charge transfer from lithium to the ZnONTs. Although, the bundle of clean (5, 5) ZnONTs is semiconductor, all the Li-intercalated (5, 5) ZnONT bundles are found to be metallic. Both inside of the nanotube and the interstitial spaces are susceptible for intercalation