The present investigation deals with the examination of the response of amorphous AlN films to post-deposition annealing environments such as high vacuum (HV) and nitrogen atmosphere (NA). The c/a ratio values from GIXRD for both cases are around 1.602. The XPS profile of NA-AlN shows a deficiency of nitrogen on the surface, whereas the oxygen impurity level is negligible in the case of NA compared with HV. The PL spectra substantiate the nitrogen vacancies in NA-AlN. The amorphous AlN exhibits a nanoindentation hardness of 18 GPa.

We report the reduction in residual stress of AlN thin films and also the crystal structure, surface morphology and nanomechanical properties of magnetron sputtered as a function of substrate temperature (T s , 35 -600 • C). The residual stress of these films was calculated by sin 2 ψ technique and found that they are varying from tensile to compression with temperature (T s ). Evolution of crystalline growth of AlN films was studied by GIXRD and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and a preferred a-axis orientation was observed at 400 • C. The cross-sectional TEM micrograph and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) of this film exhibited a high degree of orientation as well as a columnar structure. Hardness (H) measured by Nanoindentation technique on these films ranged between 12.8 -19 GPa.Submitted to: J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

The temperature dependence of optical constants of titanium nitride thin film is investigated using Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) between 1.4 and 5 eV in the temperature range of 300 K to 650 K in steps of 50 K. The real and imaginary parts of the dielectric functions ε1(E) and ε2(E) marginally increase with increase in temperature. A Drude Lorentz dielectric analysis based on free electron and oscillator model are carried out to describe the temperature behavior. With increase in temperature, the unscreened plasma frequency and broadening marginally decreased and increased, respectively. The parameters of the Lorentz oscillator model also showed that the relaxation time decreased with temperature while the oscillator energies increased. This study shows that owing to the marginal change in the refractive index with temperature, titanium nitride can be employed for surface plasmon sensor applications even in environments where rise in temperature is imminent.

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 N 2 gas has been focused towards the substrate as a reactive gas. We have observed a preferred orientation (111) with 25 W to the surface normal in pole figure analysis. The residual stress by the classical sin 2 c 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.

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