Nanocolumnar TiN thin film growth by oblique angle sputter-deposition: Experiments vs. simulations

Bouaouina, Boudjemaa; Mastail, Cédric; Besnard, Aurélien; Mareus, Rubenson; Nita, Florin; Michel, A.; Abadias, G.

doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2018.09.023

Cited by 47 publications

(40 citation statements)

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“…The Hf target was a 75 mm diameter metallic disk of pure hafnium (purity 99.9%), located at 18 cm from the substrate holder in a confocal configuration, and making a fixed angle of 25 • with respect to the vertical axis of the chamber. More details about the deposition chamber and substrate holder configurations can be found in Reference [21]. Sputter-deposition was operated at constant power (300 W) in an Ar + N 2 plasma discharge, the gases being introduced into the chamber through separate mass flow controllers.…”

Section: Thin Film Preparation At Oad Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At α = 5 • , the influence of target racetrack is visible and shifts the maximum of the distribution to 10 • , while at α = 85 • , a non-negligible skew towards lower angles is observed. In the absence of surface diffusion, kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the growth morphology of OAD TiN films have shown that the column tilt angle β is dictated by the angular distribution of the incoming particle flux [21]. Besides this effect, other mechanisms related to hyperthermal particles, such as re-sputtering or dragging mechanism [7], can contribute to straighten the columns in sputtered OAD films, by reducing the atomic shadowing effect [42].…”

Section: Tilted Columnar Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Combining oblique angle geometries and sputter-deposition technique provides additional degree of freedom to adjust the film morphological features (porosity and column tilt angle) and stoichiometry by varying the deposition pressure or target power [7][8][9][10][11] and employing more than one material source [12][13][14][15]. However, studies on transition metal nitride (TMN) films produced at OAD or GLAD conditions remain relatively underexplored [16][17][18][19][20][21]. Long-used as protective hard coatings, for which achieving a dense and compact microstructure is a pre-requisite, TMN are foreseen as promising candidate materials for plasmonic and sensing applications [22][23][24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Texture and Stress Evolution in HfN Films Sputter-Deposited at Oblique Angles

et al. 2019

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In this study, polycrystalline hafnium nitride (HfN) thin films were grown by oblique angle deposition (OAD) technique to investigate the relationship between column tilt angle, texture development and residual stress evolution with varying inclination angle α of the substrate. The films (~1 μm thickness) were grown at various angles (α = 5°, 25°, 35°, 65°, 75°, and 85°) with respect to the substrate normal by reactive magnetron sputtering at 0.3 Pa and 300 °C. The film morphology, crystal structure and residual stress state were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD), including pole figure and sin2ψ measurements. All HfN films had a cubic, NaCl-type crystal structure with an [111] out-of-plane orientation and exhibited a biaxial texture for α ≥ 35°. XRD pole figures reveal that the crystal habit of the grains consists of {100} facets constituting triangular-base pyramids, with a side and a corner facing the projection of the incoming particle flux (indicative of a double in-plane alignment). A columnar microstructure was formed for α ≥ 35°, with typical column widths of 100 nm. It is observed that the column tilt angle β increases monotonously for α ≥ 35°, reaching β = 34° at α = 85°. This variation at microscopic scale is correlated with the tilt angle of the (111) crystallographic planes, changing from −24.8 to 11.3° with respect to the substrate surface. The residual stress changes from strongly compressive (~−5 GPa at α = 5°) to negligible or slightly tensile for α ≥ 35°. The observed trends are compared to previous works of the literature and discussed based on existing crystal growth and stress models, as well as in light of energy and angular distribution of the incident particle flux calculated by Monte Carlo. Importantly, a decrease of the average kinetic energy of Hf particles from 22.4 to 17.7 eV is found with increasing α due to an increase number of collisions.

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Section: Thin Film Preparation At Oad Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tilted Columnar Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Texture and Stress Evolution in HfN Films Sputter-Deposited at Oblique Angles

et al. 2019

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“…In this investigation, glancing angle deposited TiN NRAs were grown in a magnetic sputtering system. Some previous works [28][29][30] used the same method to deposit TiN NRAs by tuning the deposition angle. The morphology of TiN NRA is slightly dependent on the deposition angle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extinction Properties of Obliquely Deposited TiN Nanorod Arrays

Jen

Wang

et al. 2018

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Plasmonic titanium nitride (TiN) nanorod arrays (NRA) were fabricated by glancing angle deposition in a DC magnetron reactive sputtering system. The morphology of the TiN NRA was varied by collimating the vapor flux. The transmittance, reflectance, and extinctance of slanted TiN nanorods with different lengths as functions of wavelength and angle of incidence were measured and analyzed. The extinction peaks in the spectra reveal the transverse and longitudinal plasmonic modes of TiN NRA upon excitation by s-polarized and p-polarized light, respectively. The near-field simulation was performed to elucidate localized field enhancements that correspond to high extinction. The extension of the high extinction band with an increasing length of the nanorods results in broadband and wide-angle light extinction for a TiN NRA with a thickness greater than 426 nm.

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“…The goal is to achieve a reliable prediction of complex, realistic microstructures based on given properties like composition and relevant process parameters. Microstructures can be predicted by simulations, e.g., kinetic Monte Carlo [29][30][31][32][33] or molecular dynamic simulation 34,35 , which depend on selection of model architectures, the selection of initial values and are computationally expensive. The interpretation of the overlap between simulation and experimental results remains to be performed by human assessment.…”

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confidence: 99%

Predicting structure zone diagrams for thin film synthesis by generative machine learning

et al. 2020

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Thin films are ubiquitous in modern technology and highly useful in materials discovery and design. For achieving optimal extrinsic properties, their microstructure needs to be controlled in a multi-parameter space, which usually requires too high a number of experiments to map. Here, we propose to master thin film processing microstructure complexity, and to reduce the cost of microstructure design by joining combinatorial experimentation with generative deep learning models to extract synthesis-composition-microstructure relations. A generative machine learning approach using a conditional generative adversarial network predicts structure zone diagrams. We demonstrate that generative models provide a so far unseen level of quality of generated structure zone diagrams that can be applied for the optimization of chemical composition and processing parameters to achieve a desired microstructure.

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Nanocolumnar TiN thin film growth by oblique angle sputter-deposition: Experiments vs. simulations

Cited by 47 publications

References 50 publications

Texture and Stress Evolution in HfN Films Sputter-Deposited at Oblique Angles

Texture and Stress Evolution in HfN Films Sputter-Deposited at Oblique Angles

Extinction Properties of Obliquely Deposited TiN Nanorod Arrays

Predicting structure zone diagrams for thin film synthesis by generative machine learning

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