Mechanical and Structural Properties of TiC and TiCN Thin Films Grown by RF Sputtering

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U6.13.1

Mechanical and structural properties of TiC and TiCN thin films grown by RF sputtering A. Mani1*, P. Aubert1, H. Khodja2, P. Houdy1 1

Laboratoire d’étude des Milieux Nanométriques, Université d’Evry, 91025 Evry, France.

2

Laboratoire Pierre Süe, CEA/DSM 91191, Gif sur Yvette, France.

ABSTRACT TiC and TiCN thin films were deposited by RF sputtering from a TiC target. For TiC thin films, the various sputtering pressure were carried out in order to observe the influence of this parameter on structural and mechanical properties. The experimental results show that a pressure of 1 Pa is necessary to obtain stoichiometric films with texture. Lower pressures induce the formation of distorted titanium carbide, while RBS spectra show that the Ti/C ratio is constant for all these samples. Both the compressive stress and the hardness exhibited a maximum value for the lowest pressures. For TiCN thin films, the composition and the hardness were investigated as function of the N2 partial pressure (PN2 = 3% to 70%).

INTRODUCTION Carbide and nitride of Ti coatings are widely used in a variety of applications owing to their excellent qualities, such as high thermal stability, high hardness and good corrosion resistance [1-2]. It is well known that the properties of deposited TiC and TiCN films depend strongly on the elaboration conditions and elaboration methods [1-3]. In this paper, we present the results on deposited TiC and TiCN films by means of RF sputtering and investigate the effect of the total pressure gas sputtering on the structure, chemical composition and mechanical properties.

*

Corresponding author : [email protected] (A. Mani)

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EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE TiC and TiCN thin films were produced by RF sputtering from a stoichiometric TiC target on Si wafers. The target substrate distance is constant ( 7 cm ) and all the films were deposited at floating temperature. Total sputtering pressure for TiC films was changed from 0.35 Pa to 1 Pa for a sputtering RF power equal to 300 W. TiCN films were produced with various Ar/N2 gas mixture (PN2 = 3%, 6%, 15%, 30% and 70%), the total pressure was fixed at 0.35 Pa and sputtering power at 200 W. The thickness of the films was fixed around 300 nm for mechanical studies. The crystalline structure of the films was characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) using a Bruker d8 Advance X-Ray diffractometer. The composition of the films has been obtained using Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy (RBS) and X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). Mechanical properties were studied by nanoindentation. The internal stress was determined by the measurement of the radius of curvature.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Figure (1-a) shows XRD patterns of films deposited at constant RF power of 300 W and for different total p

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