Titanium nitride (TiN) is a mechanically robust, high-temperature stable, metallic material receiving considerable attention for resilient plasmonics. In this work, the authors fabricated six heteroepitaxial TiN films on sapphire using controllably unbalanced reactive magnetron sputtering. They examined the effect of substrate growth temperature on the plasmonic and crystalline quality of the film. Optical properties of all films were obtained from spectroscopic ellipsometry; plasmonic quality factors were determined from the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function. The authors determined crystallinity using x-ray diffraction and surface morphology using atomic force microscopy. X-ray diffraction showed (111) TiN peaks with Pendellösung fringes indicating consistent heteroepitaxy. Atomic force microscopy showed smooth surfaces with root mean square surface roughness ranging from 0.2 to 2.6 nm. Based on this characterization, the authors determined that the substrate deposition temperature of 550 °C yielded (111)-oriented heteroepitaxial TiN with minimal surface roughness. The authors found that 550 °C also gave highest plasmonic quality factors for all wavelengths, approaching the values of today's best plasmonic materials (such as Au and Ag). Further, the Q-factors at wavelength 1550 nm inversely correlated with calculated lattice constants. Their results indicate that the plasmonic response of TiN is directly linked with structural quality of the film.
We report on epitaxial thin films of spinel ferrite Ni0.65Zn0.35Fe1.2Al0.8O4 with strain-induced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and low magnetic damping. Static magnetometry and broadband ferromagnetic resonance experiments show a distinct change in the preferred direction of magnetization from in-plane to out-of-plane when the coherent strain in films changes from ∼2% compressive on (001) MgAl2O4 to ∼0.5% tensile on (001) MgGa2O4 substrates. Significant deviations from the spin-only value (2.0) of the g-factor suggest spin-orbit effects and further support our conclusion of strain-driven magnetic anisotropy in these films. The low Gilbert damping parameter of α = 5 × 10−3 in these ferrite films, combined with their PMA, makes them promising for spintronic and frequency-agile microwave device applications.
Scandium nitride (ScN) is a degenerate n-type semiconductor with very high carrier concentrations, low resistivity, and carrier mobilities comparable to those of transparent conducting oxides such as zinc oxide. Because of its small lattice mismatch to gallium nitride (GaN), <1%, ScN is considered a very promising material for future GaN based electronics. Impurities are the source of the degeneracy. Yet, which specific impurities are the cause has remained in contention. ScN thin films of various thicknesses were grown on magnesium oxide substrates in a (001) orientation using reactive magnetron sputtering across a range of deposition conditions. X-ray diffraction was used to verify crystal orientation. Film thicknesses ranging from 39 to 85 nm were measured using scanning electron microscopy. The electronic transport properties of the films were characterized using Hall-effect measurements at temperatures ranging from 10 to 320 K. At 10 K, the electron concentration varies from 4.4 × 1020 to 1.5 × 1021 cm−3, resistivity from 2.1 × 10−4 to 5.0 × 10−5 Ω·cm, and Hall mobility from 66 to 97 cm2/V·s. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) was used to determine film compositions. Finally, density functional theory (DFT) was used to compute the activation energies for various point defects including nitrogen and scandium vacancies and oxygen and fluorine substituting for nitrogen. For both oxygen and fluorine substitution, the energies were negative, indicating spontaneous formation. Nevertheless, the combined results of the Hall, SIMS, and DFT strongly suggest that oxygen substitution is the primary mechanism behind the high carrier concentration in these samples.
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