Control of plasma flux composition incident on TiN films during reactive magnetron sputtering and the effect on film microstructure

A hybrid plasma enhanced physical vapor deposition (PEPVD) system consisting of an unbalanced dc magnetron and a pulsed electron beam-produced plasma was used to deposit reactively sputtered titanium nitride thin films. The system allowed for control of the magnitudes of the ion and neutral flux, in addition to the type of nitrogen ions (atomic or molecular) that comprised the flux. For all deposition experiments, the magnitude of the ion flux incident on the substrate was held constant, but the composition of the total flux was varied. X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy showed that crystallographic texture and surface morphology of the films were affected by the plasma flux composition during growth.