Study On Zirconium Nitride And Zirconium Oxide Thin Films Deposited By Cathodic Vacuum Arc

Nano-crystalline zirconium nitride(ZrN) and zirconium oxide(ZrO₂) films were successfully deposited on silicon and quartz respectively using cathodic vacuum arc(CVA) plasma system.The effect of substrate bias voltage and gas flow rate were investigated systemically on the compositions,structures and properties of zirconium nitride and zirconium oxide films.X-ray diffraction(XRD) was used to study the structure and grain size of films,and the results of XRD show that the grain size of films are about 15nm.From atomic force microscopy(AFM) and scanning electron microscope(SEM),they also reveal that films deposited by CVA technology are nano-crystlline films.The N/Zr ratio of zirconium nitride film increases with increasing nitrogen flow rate,and with increasing oxygen flow rate the same results were found to zirconium oxide film,when the oxygen flow rate reached 50sccm,the O/Zr ratio is about 1.98:1.The preferred orientation(111) peak is dominant for zirconium nitride films.The change of nitrogen flow rate has little effect on hardness of zirconium nitride film,but bias voltage shows a big effect on hardness.Study also reveals that flow rate has the major effect on composition of film,but bias voltage has little effect on composition.Nitrogen flow rate has a direct effect on N/Zr ratio,electrical resistivity and grain size of zirconium nitride film.The results of XRD,SEM and AFM reveal that bias voltage and flow rate effect the strcture and surface morphology of films.For zirconium nitride film,we found when the nitrogen flow rate is enough to make the N/Zr ratio to reach 1:1 approximately,zirconium nitride film has a highest hardness and Young's Mmodulus under substrate bias voltage of -100V deposited by CVA technology.For zirconium oxide film, increasing oxygen flow rate to 65sccm or above,zirconium oxide film deposited on quartz has highest transmission rate.