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Electrical conductivity enhancement of epitaxially grown TiN thin films

  • Original Paper - Condensed Matter
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Abstract

Titanium nitride (TiN) presents superior electrical conductivity with mechanical and chemical stability and compatibility with the semiconductor fabrication process. Here, we fabricated epitaxial and polycrystalline TiN (111) thin films on MgO (111), sapphire (001), and mica substrates at 640℃ and room temperature by using a DC sputtering, respectively. The epitaxial films show less amount of surface oxidation than the polycrystalline ones grown at room temperature. The epitaxial films show drastically reduced resistivity (~ 30 micro-ohm-cm), much smaller than the polycrystalline films. Temperature-dependent resistivity measurements show a nearly monotonic temperature slope down to low temperature. These results demonstrate that high-temperature growth of TiN thin films leads to significant enhancement of electrical conductivity, promising for durable and scalable electrode applications.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the KSRC (20010569), NRF (2020R1A2C200373211, 2020R1C1C1012424), MOLIT as [Innovative Talent Education Program for Smart City]. This work was supported by the 2020 Research Fund of the University of Seoul for M.Han.

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Author notes

  1. Yeong Gwang Khim, Beomjin Park, and Jin Eun Heo contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Seoul, Seoul, 02504, Republic of Korea

    Yeong Gwang Khim, Beomjin Park, Young Hun Khim, Young Rok Khim, Minseon Gu, Tae Gyu Rhee, Moonsup Han & Young Jun Chang

  2. Department of Smart Cities, University of Seoul, Seoul, 02504, Republic of Korea

    Yeong Gwang Khim, Beomjin Park, Tae Gyu Rhee & Young Jun Chang

  3. Department of Physics, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, 06974, Republic of Korea

    Jin Eun Heo & Seo Hyoung Chang

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  1. Yeong Gwang Khim
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Correspondence to Moonsup Han or Young Jun Chang.

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Khim, Y.G., Park, B., Heo, J.E. et al. Electrical conductivity enhancement of epitaxially grown TiN thin films. J. Korean Phys. Soc. 82, 486–490 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40042-023-00729-6

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