Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of TaN Thin Films Prepared by Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

Abstract

Abstract:Reactive magnetron sputtering was used to deposit tantalum nitride (Ta-N) thin films on Si substrate. The effect of varying the N 2 percentage in the N 2 /Ar gas mixture on the Ta-N film characteristics was investigated. Mechanical and tribological properties were studied using nanoindentation and pin-on-disc wear testing. Decreasing the N 2 content in the gas mixture was found to change the film structure from face centered cubic (fcc) TaN (from 25% to 10% N 2 ) to highly textured fcc TaN (at 7% N 2 ) to a mixture of fcc TaN 1.13 and hexagonal Ta 2 N (at 5% N 2 ), and finally to hexagonal Ta 2 N (at 3% N 2 ). A high hardness of about 33 GPa was shown by the films containing the hexagonal Ta 2 N phase (5% and 3% N 2 ). Decreasing the N 2 content below 7% N 2 was also found to result in microstructural refinement with grain size 5-15 nm. Besides the highest hardness, the film deposited with 3% N 2 content exhibited the highest hardness/modulus ratio (0.13), and elastic recovery (68%), and very low wear rate (3.1 × 10 −6 mm 3 ·N −1 ·m −1 ).

Microstructure and Mechanical Property Investigation of TaSiN Thin Films Deposited by Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

“…The hex Ta 2 N phase that dominates in the 13%-7% N 2 films was still emerging in the film with 15% N 2 . This transition was also seen while exploring magnetron sputtered Ta-N films [21]. Figure 2 shows the variation in the film deposition rate as a function of the N 2 content in the gas mixture.…”

“…The deposition conditions for the Ta-Si-N system were chosen based on the detailed analysis carried out previously on the Ta-N system [21]. The films were synthesized on Si (001) wafers by magnetron cosputtering of Si and Ta targets of 99.9% purity.…”

“…The Ta and N binding state in magnetron sputtered Ta-N films are discussed in detail in Ref. [21]. The high-resolution Si 2p and Ta 4f deconvoluted XPS peaks for the film deposited with 15% N2/(N2 + Ar) are presented in Figure 4a,b, respectively.…”

Exploring oxygen-affinity-controlled TaN electrodes for thermally advanced TaOx bipolar resistive switching

“…The flow rate of 3 sccm appeared to yield a nitrogen-rich fcc TaN x structure (PDF card No: 01-079-5806). Thus, suitable control of the nitrogen content during growth induced the formation of various TaN x crystal structures 25 . These XRD findings were consistent for all samples in our experiments.…”

Influence of Post-Annealing on the Structural and Nanomechanical Properties of Co Thin Films

“…For practical applications, since the manufacturing and packaging processes are inevitably involving contact loading, it is thus necessary to fully recognize the mechanical characteristics of Co thin films, especially in the nanoscale regime. To this respect, nanoindentation stands out as one of the most efficient tools for obtaining the basic mechanical characteristics, such as the hardness and elastic modulus, at small length scales of various thin films [7][8][9][10] or micro/nano-sized materials [11][12][13][14][15] owing to its advantages of high sensitivity, good resolution and easy operation. In addition, it has been widely recognized that the loading and unloading segments of the nanoindentation load-displacement curves often reflect rich information about the dominant deformation mechanism prevailing in the materials under investigation.…”