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The relationship between annealing and nitrogen flow ratios during magnetron sputtering of AlN films

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Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the morphology, internal stress and defect changes of aluminum nitride (AlN) films at the different nitrogen (N2) flow ratio during high-temperature annealing, and makes a theoretical explanation. When the N2 flow ratio is 70%, the AlN films have the most stable properties and the best quality. According to Raman analysis, the internal stress of the annealed AlN films is reduced. In combination with atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) tests, the heat-treated AlN films show voids and undergo grain rearrangement, which provides evidence for high-temperature annealing to reduce film defects and dislocations. The ultraviolet (UV) transmission spectroscopy results show that the annealing improves the optical properties of AlN films by increasing the transmittance and band gap. This work enriches the basic mechanism of heat treatment morphology change and explores the relationship between N2 parameters and annealing, which is of important significance for obtaining high quality AlN films.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hebei (Grant No. QN2021044), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61674051), the project for Science and Technology Correspondent of Tianjin City (Grant No. 20YDTPJC01710), the S&T Program of Hebei (Grant No. 20311001D).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300130, China

    Yaqi Han, Hui Zhang, Xinjian Xie, Zefeng Liu, Kangqi Geng, Yun Yang, Yushuo Zhang & Guifeng Chen

  2. Hebei Engineering Laboratory of Photoelectronic Functional Crystals, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300130, China

    Hui Zhang & Guifeng Chen

  3. School of Science, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300130, China

    Xinjian Xie

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  1. Yaqi Han
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Contributions

YH: writing–review and editing, writing–original draft, data curation. HZ: software, formal analysis, data curation, conceptualization. XX: supervision, resources, methodology, investigation. ZL: validation, software, resources, formal analysis. KG: validation, resources, methodology. YY: visualization, software, resources. YZ: validation, resources, methodology. GC: supervision, resources, funding acquisition, conceptualization.

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Correspondence to Xinjian Xie or Guifeng Chen.

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Han, Y., Zhang, H., Xie, X. et al. The relationship between annealing and nitrogen flow ratios during magnetron sputtering of AlN films. Appl. Phys. A 129, 122 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-022-06311-4

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