Effect of Nitrogen Flow Rate On Structure and Properties of Nanocrystalline Tin Thin Films Produced by Unbalanced Magnetron Sputtering
Effect of Nitrogen Flow Rate On Structure and Properties of Nanocrystalline Tin Thin Films Produced by Unbalanced Magnetron Sputtering
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Abstract
Nanocrystalline TiN thin films were deposited on (100) silicon wafers using an unbalanced magnetron (UBM) sputtering system. The
structure and properties of the TiN thin films were studied under single-variable experimental condition by varying nitrogen flow rate ranging
from 0.25 to 1.75 sccm. The grain size of the films was determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the size was less than 7 nm. The images
of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) also showed a
nanometer-size grain structure of the TiN thin films. The N/Ti ratio increased (N/Ti=0.4–1.1) while the deposition rate decreased with
increasing nitrogen flow rate. The preferred orientation changed from (111) to (200), then back to (111) as the nitrogen flow rate increased.
There was no significant variation in the film hardness with nitrogen flow rate or preferred orientation. It is noted that the film hardness was
high, ranging from 23.4 to 27.6 GPa, even for the film thickness down to 140 nm. The resistivity decreased with increasing packing factor.
Ti/TiN nano-composite was found in the films with N/Ti ratio below 0.6.
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challenge to produce a TiN film with a film thickness about bias of 1000 V for 10 min to remove the surface oxide
200 nm and with comparable properties as that thicker than layer. The argon pressure was fixed at 0.8 Pa (6103 Torr)
500 nm. To reach this goal, further improvement of the and the current density was 0.15 mA/cm2 during pre-
deposition process should be carried out, and better under- sputtering. The target-to-substrate distance was 20 cm. After
standing of the structure and properties of TiN thin film is pre-sputtering, high purity working gas and reactive gas
necessary. were introduced, using mass flow controllers to regulate
DC reactive unbalanced magnetron (UBM) sputtering both gas flows. Argon (99.9995%) gas flow rate was fixed
system is one of the popular coating systems to deposit high at 15 sccm with a maximum flow rate of 50 sccm. Nitrogen
quality films of pure metals, metal nitrides, metal oxides, gas (99.9995%) flow rate was varied from 0.25 to 1.75 sccm
and metal carbides [8]. Therefore, UBM sputtering system with a maximum gas flow rate controlled at 5 sccm. The
was chosen in this study to deposit thin TiN films with mass flow controllers were precisely calibrated and the
thickness close to 200 nm. Using Taguchi experiment accuracy of the gas flow rates was within 2%. The total gas
design method, we have found the optimum conditions for pressure was fixed at 0.133 Pa (1103 Torr). The DC
the deposition of TiN thin films [9] by UBM sputtering. power supply of the Ti target was operated at 0.9 A using
Based on the conditions, single-variable experiment by constant-current mode; in other words, the target current
varying nitrogen partial pressure was performed in this density was 2.8 mA/cm2. The substrate ion current density,
study to further narrow down the window of process simultaneously monitored during the coating process, was
parameters. The purpose of this study was to investigate higher than 3 mA/cm2. During deposition, a negative
the effect of nitrogen flow rates on the structure, compo- substrate bias voltage of 50 V was applied and the
sition and mechanical properties of nanocrystalline TiN thin deposition temperature was maintained at 400 8C, moni-
film. tored using a thermocouple near the substrate. The
deposition duration was 40 min for all samples. The coating
conditions were adopted from our previous Taguchi
2. Experimental procedures experimental study [9]. The deposition conditions for the
seven samples are listed in Table 1.
The deposition of TiN films was carried out using a DC The crystal structure and grain size of the TiN films were
unbalanced magnetron (UBM) sputtering (STS-400) sys- determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Cu Ka line at
tem. The deposition chamber was connected with a 0.15405 nm was used as the source for diffraction. The XRD
pumping system consisting of a turbomolecular pump, with analysis was also utilized for the evaluation of preferred
a pumping speed of 500 l/min, and a rotary pump as orientation. The strength of the preferred orientation is
forepump. A rectangular titanium target (99.9%) with defined by a texture coefficient=I(hkl)/[I(111)+I(200)],
dimensions 24813010 mm3 was used. The substrate where I is the integrated intensity of the corresponding peak
material was Si (100) wafer with dimensions of 45450.7 and (hkl) represents (111) or (200). The full width at half
mm3. Prior to the coating process, the Si specimens were maximum (FWHM) and the position of (111) or (200) peak
undergone ultrasonic cleaning progressively in acetone and were used to calculate the grain size by Scherrer equation
ethanol and then dried in a vacuum dryer. [10]. The microstructure of the deposited TiN film was
Before deposition, the substrates were gradually pre- observed using both field-emission-gun scanning electron
heated to a temperature of 300 8C. Meanwhile, the chamber microscopy (FEG-SEM) operated at 5 kV, and cross-
was evacuated to 8104 Pa (6106 Torr) to avoid sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) operated
contamination during deposition process. Prior to deposi- at 200 kV. The samples for SEM observations were prepared
tion, the substrate was pre-sputtered by argon discharge at a by cleaving the TiN deposited Si specimens. Since TiN is an
Table 1
Summary of the experimental results
Nitrogen Thickness Substrate (111) Deposition Grain Lattice N/Ti Hardness Packing Resistivity Residual
flow rate (nm) ion current Texture rate size parameter ratio (GPa) factor (AV-cm) stress
(sccm) density coefficient (nm/min) (nm) (nm) (GPa)
(mA/cm2)
0.25 253 3.4 1a 6.3 4a 0.4201 0.4 23.4 0.62 216 –
0.50 244 3.6 0.63a 6.1 7a 0.4223 0.5 26.8 0.68 142 10.2
0.75 224 3.2 0.22 5.6 7 0.4259 0.9 25.8 0.79 98 8.8
1.00 200 3.4 0.26 5.0 7 0.4240 1.0 27.6 0.80 88 9.2
1.25 192 3.4 0.51 4.8 7 0.4255 1.0 26.4 0.80 90 9.4
1.50 184 3.1 0.78 4.6 7 0.4217 1.1 24.8 0.68 119 8.9
1.75 140 3.8 0.76 3.5 6 0.4240 1.1 24.6 0.78 123 8.1
Deposition condition: DC power 340 W, PAr+P N2=0.133 Pa, bias 50 V, temperature 400 8C, deposition time 40 min.
a
Peak was de-convoluted.
J.-H. Huang et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 191 (2005) 17–24 19
electric conductive material, no further pretreatment was specimens are less than 10 nm. The AFM image also
done on the specimens. The cross-section of the specimen supports the result. It can be seen that the surface grain
was examined. The TiN film thickness was also measured size is in nanometer scale, as shown in Fig. 1, where at
from the SEM observations. least hundreds of grains within the scanning area of
The N/Ti ratios and packing factors were obtained by 100100 nm2. The cross-sectional SEM images, as shown
Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) using RUMP in Fig. 2, reveal that there is no columnar structure in the
simulation code. The N/Ti ratio and packing factor were TiN films.
obtained from the RBS results. The packing factor is defined It is known that high mobility of adatoms may lead to the
as formation of coarse grains in the TiN film [12], due to the
fact that the bulk and surface diffusion rates are enhanced
SAD 1015 and adatoms can migrate for a larger distance. Since the
Packing factor ¼
DN0 t=A deposition was performed at 400 8C, coarse grains were
expected to form at such a high deposition temperature.
where SAD is the simulated atomic packing density (#/cm2) However, the high deposition temperature did not facilitate
from RBS, D is the density of TiN (g/cm3), N 0 is Avogadro the formation of coarse-grain films; instead, the processing
number 6.021023, t is the film thickness (cm), and A is the produced nanocrystalline TiN films. Evidently, other factors
molecular weight of TiN (g/mol). The surface compositions may dominate the process.
were determined using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy The energy delivery and momentum transfer to the
(XPS). The photoelectron spectra were excited by soft X-ray growing film by the incident ions and atoms should be
using Mg anode at 1253.6 V. To eliminate the surface oxide, considered for understanding the formation of nano-
the specimen was sputtered with 3 keV Ar+ ions for 2.5 min. crystalline films. To estimate the incident ion and atom
The spectrum was first subtracted its background using energies, mean free path of the particles in the deposition
Shirley’s method and then fitted with Gaussian function chamber needs to be first taken into account. The mean
using least-square method. free path of particle can be estimated by the following
The residual stresses of the TiN films were determined equations [13],
using the modified XRD sin2w method [11]. The Cu Ka
1 P
line at 0.15418 nm was used as the source for diffraction. X- k¼ and n ¼
ray was incident at a grazing angle of 28 to increase the np d 2 kT
diffraction volume of the thin film specimen. For the TiN where k is the mean free path, d is the collision diameter
films, (220) peak was used for the residual stress measure- of argon (d=1.76 2), n is number of particle per m3, P is
ment because it provided sufficient intensity for precise the working pressure ( P=0.133 Pa), k is the Boltzmann
determination of the peak position. constant (k=1.381023 J/K) and T is the chamber
To avoid the substrate effect, hardness of the TiN film temperature (T=623 K). The calculation shows that the
was measured using nanoindentation with a Berkovich mean free path of the sputtered particles is close to 66
diamond indenter head. The testing load was carefully cm, while the substrate to target distance in our system
selected to meet the requirement that the contact depth was 20 cm. Therefore, the mean free path is larger than
should be about one-tenth of film thickness. To evaluate
the creep effect, the load was first increased in 20 s to the
desired load and held for 5 s; then, unloaded in 20 s. A
standard quartz sample was used to calibrate the nano-
indenter and the accuracy of the hardness was within 10%.
For each sample, 10 measurements were performed and
the average value was reported. The precision of each
value was within 10%. The resistivity of the TiN film was
measured using a four-point-probe. The surface roughness
of the TiN film was determined by an atomic force
microscope (AFM).
Fig. 2. (a, b) The cross-sectional SEM pictures for the TiN films deposited at 1.5 sccm (a) and 0.25 sccm (b).
the distance between target and substrate. This implies volume (assume 11014thickness nm3), and R is the N/
that the effect of nitrogen flow rate on the mean free (N+Ti) ratio from RBS. The results show that N ranges from
path can be neglected. In other words, the particles 7.71017 to 1.11018. It is obvious that nitrogen atoms in
directly impinge on the growing film without colliding the TiN films do not significantly vary with increasing
with other particles. nitrogen flow rate. This indicates that the variation N/Ti
The energy delivered to growing film per unit volume S E ratio is due to the change of titanium content in the TiN thin
is defined as S E=(V bV p)(I b/D) [14], where V b is the film. Therefore, the supply of Ti atoms is progressively
negative substrate bias, V p is the plasma potential (V pbbV b, decreased as the nitrogen flow rate increases. This is
V p can be neglected), I b is the substrate ion current density supported by the evidence that the deposition rate decreases
and D is the deposition rate. The energy is estimated to be with increasing nitrogen flow rate (Table 1). Since the
ranged from 16 to 34 MJ/cm3, which is much higher than deposition rate is closely related to the number of Ti atoms
the previously reported value about 5 MJ/cm3 [14]. The arrives at the substrate surface, lower deposition rate
high energy particles not only deliver energy but also represents that fewer Ti atoms reach the substrate and
damage or re-sputter the film lattice by momentum transfer. thereby increasing the N/Ti ratio.
Thus, many heterogeneous nucleation sites can be created
during the deposition process. Since too many grains are 3.3. Preferred orientation
nucleated simultaneously on the substrate, the small grains
are difficult to grow without encountering neighboring Fig. 4 shows the (111) and (200) texture coefficients with
grains. The increase of nucleation sites and the decrease of respect to nitrogen flow rate. The texture coefficient is
grain-growth territory apparently facilitate the formation of defined as I(hkl)/(I(111)+I(200)), where (hkl) represents
nanocrystalline TiN film. (111) or (200), and I(111)/(I(111)+I(200))=0.42 corresponds
to the random orientation of TiN from the data in the Joint
3.2. Compositions Committee of Powder Diffraction Standard (JCPDS) [15]. It
Fig. 3 shows that the N/Ti ratio of the TiN films with
respect to the nitrogen flow rate. It can be seen that the N/Ti
ratio steeply increases from 0.4 to 1.0 when the nitrogen
flow rate increases from 0.25 to 1.00 sccm. Beyond this
range, the N/Ti ratio slowly increases to 1.1 as the nitrogen
flow rate increases from 1.00 to 1.75 sccm. Obviously, N/Ti
ratios are sensitive to the nitrogen flow rates.
It is interesting to understand that the increase of N/Ti
ratio is due to increasing N atoms or decreasing Ti atoms.
The number of nitrogen atoms, N, in the TiN film can be
calculated as below
n
N¼ VR
a30
4. Conclusions
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