Effect of target–substrate distance on the quality of AlN films grown on Si(110) substrates by pulsed laser deposition

Study on optimizing c-axis oriented AlN thin film for piezoelectric sensing applications controlling the sputtering process parameters

“…But in the case of 0.93 Pa, high collision and energy loss lead to reduced adatoms mobility caused by lack of surface kinetics, which again highly promotes (100) growth. A similar result of a change in growth direction due to the difference in kinetic energy of the sputters particles was observed by Yang et al [6], where the target-substrate distance was varied while growing AlN films by the pulsed laser deposition technique. Figure 4c shows the FWHM of (002) AlN under different pressure conditions which indicates the crystalline nature of the film.…”

“…The low intensity of (002) AlN than (100) AlN peak in parallel type deposition is possible because of the excess surface kinetics in the substrate surface which leads to insufficient time for adatoms to move into their low energy lattice sites before being superimposed by additional adatoms [6]. To confirm the above-said phenomenon, AlN was deposited in parallel sputtering by varying the working pressure from 0.39-0.93 Pa with all other sputter parameters same and studied its growth orientation (Fig.…”

“…To deposit AlN thin film with a specific orientation, various techniques have been carried out including molecular beam epitaxy [4], metal-organic chemical vapour deposition [5], pulsed laser deposition [6] and magnetron sputtering [7,8]. Among these methods, reactive sputtering is favourable because of its simple process parameter control for the deposition of AlN at relatively low temperatures.…”