Compositional control of ultrahard ternary nitride films deposited by reactive sputtering

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We have developed a dual source reactive sputtering apparatus with a plasma emission monitoring system for controlling nitrogen partial pressure during sputtering. Ternary nitride films, such as TiAlN and TiCN, were deposited onto glass slides and characterized by XRD, SEM-EDS, AES/ESCA etc. Ti-C, Ti-N, Al-N and C-N films were also deposited and characterized as constituents of these ternary nitrides. When these ternary nitride films were deposited, the intensity of Ti emission line (365 nm) in the sputtering plasma was monitored, and stabilized by controlling nitrogen flow rate. Two or three kinds of applied power ratio for dual magnetron source were selected, and nitrogen partial pressure was used as a main parameter. Ar partial pressure and substrate temperature were kept constant at 0.4 Pa and R.T. through all experiments.When TiAlN films were deposited, Al composition TiAlN films changed with nitrogen partial pressure. It should be caused by the difference of nitrogen reactivity between Ti and Al target. TiAlN films having NaCl type crystal structure appeared to grow even if the Ti : Al ratio comes to 40 : 60/In case of depositing C-rich TiCN films, C composition in the films increased because of chemical sputtering of graphite target. The structure of C-rich films, changed from NaCl type to amorphous by increasing nitrogen partial pressure. The titanium atoms seemed to prefer to bond with nitrogen atoms rather than carbon atoms.