Structural characterization of sputtered single-phase γ‴ iron nitride coatings

Study of non-magnetic iron mononitride thin films

“…The intensity ratio of the reflections I (1 1 1) /I (2 0 0) has been used to confirm the structure. If the ratio I (1 1 1) /I (2 0 0) is (>2) the ZnS-type structure formed while in case of NaCl-type structure this ratio should be smaller than unity (for a = 0.450 nm) [33]. Therefore, as can be deduced from the XRD patterns, our samples are single phase -FeN having ZnS type structure.…”

“…The theoretical studies in iron mononitride predict that the lattice parameter of FeN in the NaCl structure should be between 0.39 and 0.42 nm, which is considerably lower than the experimentally obtained value of 0.45 nm [35,36]. In recent studies the existence of the -FeN phase in the NaCl-type structure was questioned [10,11,33], and concluded that the -FeN compound should have ZnS-type structure. In the present work our aim is to study the structural and magnetic properties of iron mononitride thin films prepared using dc-magnetron sputtering.…”

“…The conversion electrons were detected by a proportional counter having continuous flow of a helium-methane (5% methane balance helium) gas mixture. [33] for iron mononitride having the -FeN phase with ZnS-type structure. The pattern corresponding to the sample prepared at sputtering power of 50 W and 100 W are almost identical but that of 200 W has lesser relative intensity and larger line widths.…”

“…Here we discuss the fitting procedure for the CEMS pattern. In the literature such CEMS pattern for non-magnetic iron nitrides has been obtained in a number of studies [24,26,27,33]. The fitting of such CEMS spectrum can either be done using two singlets or a singlet and a doublet [27].…”

“…Since the first preparation of -FeN by Oueldennaoua et al [20] and -FeN by Nakagawa et al [21], several attempts were made to prepare and characterize thin films of / -FeN [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Most of the studies concluded that both and phases of FeN coexist.…”