Studies On B-Ti-N Thin Film Material With Composition Spread Method

In this thesis work, thin films related to BN, Ti-B-N and SiNx compounds were prepared by the microwave electron cyclotron resonance (MW-ECR) plasma enhanced unbalanced magnetron sputtering of h-BN, Ti and Si targets in Ar/N2 circumstances. Utilizing Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), na-no-hardness tester and step device, we investigated the different bonding structures, the ele-ment ratio, hardness and thickness of the films prepared with different deposition parameters, moreover, we studied the electrical properties of Ti-B-N composition-spread films by resis-tivity measurements with the two-probe method.It was shown that, heating and increasing N2 partial pressure reduced oxygen impurity in the BN films prepared from h-BN target and nitrogen (the oxygen came from the h-BN target who might in take moisture from the air), but between 200℃and 500℃the temperature had no effect on the growth of h-BN film. On the other hand, films growth under various substrate biases, including negative DC bias, pulsed negative bias and RF self bias, showed no c-BN phase as indicated by the FTIR test results. It was unexpected that the high density ECR plasma, which provided large ion flux to the film bombarding on it, showed no advantage in growth of the BN films, while the films grown by the'two-step temperature bias'method, without enhancement of the ECR plasma, showed existence of the c-BN phase according to the FTIR results.Further study on preparation of composition spread Ti-B-N ternary films showed sig-nificant change of resistivity with the Ti and B compositions:doping of B reduced the resistivity of TiN, whereas the doping of Ti in the BN side also caused changing of electrical properties. These primary results indicated the necessity of further studies on the physical properties of Ti-B-N films with respect to the B, N and Ti compositions.As a basis for studies of component spread films such as B-Si-N and Ti-Si-N, prepara-tion and physical properties of SiNx films were also studied. The results show that the hard-ness of SiNx film decreases with the N2 partial pressure increasing, the composition at which the highest hardness achieved deviated from the stoichiometry of Si3N4. On the other hand, with increasing substrate temperature the hardness of films firstly increased, reached the maximum value at 620℃and then decreased.