Abstract
Carbon nitride (CNx) films have been deposited by reactive sputtering of a graphite target with nitrogen and/or argon gases. A modified cylindrical DC magnetron was used as a sputter deposition source and the processing plasma was monitored by means of both a Langmuir probe and optical emission spectroscopy (OES). The nitrogen to carbon ratio (N/C ratio) evaluated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) ranged from 0 to 0.5. Strong correlation between N/C ratio in the film and N2+ /N2* emission intensity ratio was confirmed from the result of the OES study. An absorption band near 2200 cm-1 in the Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra strongly indicated the existence of C≡N covalent bonding. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) bright-field imaging revealed that the prepared CNx film contained nanocrystallines buried in the amorphous background and the observed grain size was 10–60 nm range.
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