Deposition of TiN thin films on Si(100) by HCD ion plating

Titanium nitride (TiN) films were deposited on Si(100) substrates using a hollow cathode discharge ion plating (HCD-IP) technique. Based on previous experimental results, the optimum deposition conditions were chosen. The thickness of the TiN film and the angle between the specimen surface and the evaporating source (coating angle) were selected as the variable parameters. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of these two processing parameters on the properties of TiN films. After deposition, the thin film structure was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM), and field-emission-gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM). N/Ti ratios of the thin films were determined using both X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS) and Rutherford backscattering spectrometer (RBS). The resistivity of the TiN films was measured by a four-point probe. The hardness of the thin films was obtained from nanoindentation tests. An atomic force microscope (AFM) was used to measure the roughness of the thin films. The results showed that (111) was the dominant preferred orientation in the TiN films for most of the deposition conditions and for all coating angles, especially for film thicknesses greater than 1 μm. Hardness values of TiN films were approximately 28 GPa for film thicknesses close to 0.5 μm and above, and did not vary with the coating angle. The hardness can be correlated to the (111) preferred orientation of the TiN film. The hardness increased with the (111) texture coefficient and leveled off as the texture coefficient approached 1. The packing factor had a linear relationship with the film thickness. Resistivity decreased with increasing thickness and increasing packing factor for all coating angles. At a similar thickness or packing factor, specimens coated at angles different from 0° had a much higher resistivity than those coated at 0°.