Synthesis of nanostructured titanium nitride films by PLD through reactive processing

Abstract

High quality TiN films were synthesised from elemental metallic target using reactive and plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition (RPLD and PAPLD) techniques. In these processes, a high pure titanium target is ablated using a nanosecond pulsed Nd:YAG laser operating at 1064 nm wavelength at different nitrogen pressures. In RPLD process, the titanium plume reacts directly with the nitrogen gas at pressures less than 0·07 mbar to yield TiN films. In PAPLD process, additional nitrogen plasma was generated and confined by a DC coil positioned between target and substrate. Resultant films were characterised for phase, composition and morphology using glancing incidence X-ray diffraction, Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), Rutherford back-scattering and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). Reactive pulsed laser deposition grown TiN films were found to contain traces of unreacted titanium. The crystallite size is estimated to be 15 and 50 nm respectively by using X-ray diffraction and AFM. Rutherford backscattering investigations helped the authors in arriving at the stoichiometry and AES analysis revealed the formation of TiN with low oxygen contamination.