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Effects of substrate temperature on the properties of sputtered TiN thin films

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Abstract

In the present work, high quality nanostructured thin films of titanium nitride with nanoscale grain sizes have been prepared by the reactive magnetron sputtering method examining the effects of the substrate temperature on the topography, optical and semiconductor properties of the thin films Concretely, the three dimension surface topography of samples was investigated by atomic force microscopy determining the power spectral density functions. Also, a new revised version of the Tauc’s method (named ineffective thickness method) has been proposed for the determination of the optical band gap in nanostructure semiconductor thin films. These studies indicated that the increment of the substrate temperature improves the physical properties of the films modifying the grain size and grain aggregation, and altering the optical band gap of the samples from 4.06 to 3.43 eV. In addition, a competitive growth of crystalline planes with different orientations was found as a result of the occurrence of higher grain sizes in the nanostructured titanium nitride thin films.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran

    Nader Ghobadi & Mohsen Ganji

  2. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Av. Pedro de Alba s/n, San Nicolás de los Garza, 66455, Nuevo León, Mexico

    Carlos Luna

  3. Young Researchers and Elite Club, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

    Ali Arman

  4. Departments of Physics, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

    Azin Ahmadpourian

Authors
  1. Nader Ghobadi
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  2. Mohsen Ganji
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  3. Carlos Luna
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  4. Ali Arman
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  5. Azin Ahmadpourian
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nader Ghobadi.

Appendix

Appendix

The basic properties of the height values distribution, including its variance, skewness, kurtosis and PSD were computed according to Ref. [22]. Root-mean-square deviation (S q ), skewness of topography height distribution (S sk ), kurtosis of topography height distribution (S ku ) are parameters that depend on the height deviation, and they are useful for description of amplitude-related properties of a surface. These parameters are applied to describe dispersion, asymmetry of the height distribution and sharpness of the height distribution.

Sq, is a dispersion parameter defined as the root mean square value of the surface departures within the sampling area and is a very general and widely used parameter.

Ssk is the measurement of asymmetry of surface deviations about the mean reference plane and can effectively be used to describe the shape of the topography height distribution.

SKu, is a measure of the peakedness or sharpness of the surface height distribution and characterizes the spread of the height distribution.

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Ghobadi, N., Ganji, M., Luna, C. et al. Effects of substrate temperature on the properties of sputtered TiN thin films. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 27, 2800–2808 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-015-4093-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-015-4093-x

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