Ion-bombardment-induced reduction in vacancies and its enhanced effect on conductivity and reflectivity in hafnium nitride films

Abstract

Although the role of ion bombardment on electrical conductivity and optical reflectivity of transition metal nitrides films was reported previously, the results were controversial and the mechanism was not yet well explored. Here, we show that proper ion bombardment, induced by applying the negative bias voltage (V b), significantly improves the electrical conductivity and optical reflectivity in rocksalt hafnium nitride films regardless of level of stoichiometry (i.e., in both near-stoichiometric HfN1.04 and over-stoichiometric HfN1.17 films). The observed improvement arises from the increase in the concentration of free electrons and the relaxation time as a result of reduction in nitrogen and hafnium vacancies in the films. Furthermore, HfN1.17 films have always much lower electrical conductivity and infrared reflectance than HfN1.04 films for a given V b, owing to more hafnium vacancies because of larger composition deviation from HfN exact stoichiometry (N:Hf = 1:1). These new insights are supported by good agreement between experimental results and theoretical calculations.