A Comparative Study of Structure and Residual Stress in Chromium Nitride Films Deposited by Vacuum Arc Evaporation, Ion Plating, and DC Magnetron Sputtering

Abstract

Chromium nitride layers have been deposited by three PVD techniques - vacuum arc evaporation, ion plating, and dc magnetron sputtering - for different substrate bias voltages, whereas the substrate temperature was always kept constant at 400 °C. X-ray diffraction (XRD) has been utilized to detect the phases, to determine the texture of the films, and to calculate lattice parameters and grain size. The samples have been subjected to stress detection by analysis of the stress induced sample bending. The subject of this study is the investigation of the dependence of structure and residual film stress on the substrate bias voltage for each method, and a comparison of the obtained results. The principal differences between the three deposition techniques are the composition, the percentage of ionization, and the average energies of the layer forming species. A clear correlation between these properties and the differences in the evolution of structure and residual stress in dependence on the substrate bias voltage for the different deposition techniques can be observed.