Epitaxial growth of TaN thin films on Si(100) and Si(111) using a TiN buffer layer

We have deposited high-quality epitaxial B1 NaCl-structured TaN films on Si(100) and Si(111) substrates with TiN as the buffer layer, using pulsed laser deposition. Our method exploits the concept of lattice-matching epitaxy between TiN and TaN and domain-matching epitaxy between TiN and silicon. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscopy (Z-contrast) experiments confirmed the single-crystalline nature of the films with cube-on-cube epitaxy. The stoichiometry of the TaN films was determined to be nitrogen deficient (TaN0.95±0.05) by Rutherford backscattering. Resistivity of the TaN films was found to be ∼220 μΩ cm at room temperature with a temperature coefficient of resistivity of −0.5 μΩ K−1.