Optical behavior of reactive sputtered carbon nitride films

Carbon nitride films with β-C3N4 crystals were grown on Si(100) substrates using reactive sputtering. The deposition was achieved using a graphite target in an argon/nitrogen plasma. Different nitrogen (N2) fractions and substrate biases were used while the other parameters remained fixed. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to measure the surface roughness and surface morphology. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and ellipsometry measurements were carried out to analyze nitrogen content, chemical bonding state, and optical properties. AFM measurement indicated the surface roughness ranged from 0.2 to 2.5 nm. From XPS data, maximum N/C ratio of 0.5 was achieved in the films. The XPS C 1s spectrum for C–N bond is at 287.32 eV while the N 1s spectrum has a corresponding peak of C–N bond at 398.46. At N2 fraction from 0.6–0.8 and bias from −120 to −200 V, high sp3/sp2 ratio and more β-C3N4 crystals were obtained. Consequently, the films grown at these conditions had high optical band gap. The optical band gap ranged from 1.35 to 2.5 eV.