Abstract
We present Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) spectra from epitaxial B1-NaCl-structure TiN(001) layers grown on MgO(001)1×1 by ultrahigh vacuum magnetron sputter deposition. The layers are stoichiometric with a N/Ti ratio of 1.01 ± 0.02 as shown by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS). AES spectra were obtained from clean TiN(100) surfaces by cleaving 5-μm-thick layers in situ in the Auger spectrometer at a vacuum of 2 × 10−10 Torr. For comparison, we also show spectra obtained following sputter etching for 5 min with a 3 keV Ar+ beam at an incident current density of 0.11 mA cm−2 in order to simulate typical “sputter cleaning” conditions following sample air exposure. The Ar+ beam was incident at an angle of 58° with respect to the cleaved surface normal [100]. We show that sputter etching reduces the N/Ti ratio to 0.89 due to preferential sputtering. In the experiments, the AES spectra were collected using primary electron beam energies of 3, 5, 10, and 20 keV.
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