Excimer laser reactive ablation: An efficient approach for the deposition of high quality TiN films

The successful deposition of TiN films on Si wafers by excimer (λ=308 nm) multipulse laser ablation of Ti in a low pressure N2 jet is reported in this article. The films are particularly pure, entirely consisting of polycrystalline fcc TiN. One difficulty still seems to be related to the presence of small droplets probably ejected in a liquid phase. According to the analyses, TiN is formed on Ti target with small contributions only, if any, of the next transit through gas and final deposition onto the Si wafer support.