Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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DS: Dünne Schichten

DS 24: Poster presentation

DS 24.44: Poster

Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 15:00–17:30, P2

Structural evolution in reactively sputtered copper nitride films — •F. Uslu¹, M. Luysberg², K. Sarakinos¹, P. Karimi¹, and M. Wuttig¹ — ¹I.Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen, 52056 Aachen — ²IFF, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich

Early transition metal nitrides such as TiN or ZrN are well known for their applications, which include hard coatings due to their high hardness and high melting temperatures. Much less is known about the physical properties of late transition metal nitrides such as copper-nitride. Reactive dc magnetron sputtering has been applied to prepare copper-nitride films on glass and silicon substrates as well. To elucidate the microstructural features of copper nitride films several methods such as X-ray diffraction, grazing incidence geometry and X-ray reflectometry have been employed. In addition transmission electron microscopy has been utilised to obtain a thorough understanding of the microstructural evolution in copper-nitride films. To this end specimens deposited at two different nitrogen flow rates of 12 and 50 sccm N₂ respectively, were analysed. The x-ray investigations reveal that the (111) and (200) grain orientations are stronger than the other ones, where the (111) orientation is dominant. It was possible to decrease this (111) preferred orientation and increase of the (200) orientation by increasing the sputtering current. This is attributed to an enhanced incident ion flux and hence to a bombardment with nitrogen ions. A further effect of this bombardment is reflected in the mechanical properties, where the films reveal compressive stress. The enhanced bombardment leads to an increase of the cell size with increasing nitrogen flow rate.